AUSTIN, Texas -- For decades, NASA has been exploring Mars with the help of robots.

The newest, called Perseverance, is the most sophisticated robotic rover yet and she’s scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral early Wednesday morning.

In the above video, the Entry, Descent, and Landing Lead for NASA’s 2020 Mars Rover Mission, Allen Chen, talks with our Chief Meteorologist Burton Fitzsimmons about the mission and highlights some of Perseverance’s new tools, like a sidekick drone helicopter.

BF: I'm very excited about this story. NASA's most sophisticated Mars rover yet, called Perseverance, launches early Wednesday. Here to talk about it from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California we've got Entry, Descent, and Landing lead for the mission, Mr. Allen Chen. Thank you for joining us.

AC: Thanks for having me.

BF: Wow, I don't even know how you're gonna get any sleep through the night tonight. This is an early launch tomorrow. We've got an 80 percent chance of favorable weather at the Cape. And you're trying to get Perseverance, which is a car-sized rover weighing over one ton, to Mars. Not an easy feat. Talk to us about the mission.

AC: Well, this mission is exciting. All of our previous Mars orbiters landers and rover missions have been leading up to this one. Those missions helped us find evidence that, in its early days, Mars was warm and wet and habitable, just like Earth. So now we get to try to answer the big question: Can we find any evidence that there was past life on Mars? So to do that, we're sending the biggest, smartest and most capable rover we ever built the most challenging landing site we've ever attempted to land at. And because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, we want to bring back that evidence home here to Earth.

BF: It's a 63 million mile journey, no small feat. We've got a small window of opportunity while Mars and Earth are in a good orbital, kind of setup. Talk about the launch and then you're part of the deal, which is landing.

AC: Right now our rover is strapped on top of a million pounds of rocket waiting to jump off this planet tomorrow. As you mentioned, we only have a few weeks of opportunity every 26 months to be able to launch to Mars. We literally need our planets to be in the right place. So that's what's happening tomorrow, we'll start that journey all the way to Mars, and we won't get there until February 18, about 204 days from now, and that's where my team comes in. That's where my team is charged with getting the rover safely from the top of the atmosphere to wheels down to Jezero crater.

BF: Jezero is a crater.  What's so special about that geographical area of Mars?

AC: Jezero crater was an ancient Lake that was filled up with water and had a river flowing into it. And that river left a river delta much like you might see it at the end of the Mississippi or something like that. And river deltas are great places to look for life. The Delta deposits are a nice place to have those signs of life appear and be trapped there and preserved for the future and that delta even though the lake that was in Jezero is long gone, that delta feature is still there. And that's what we're going to explore hoping to find those signs of life in that delta.

BF: So will Perseverance be landing like Opportunity and Curiosity did, and what did we learn from those missions that are helping Perseverance?

AC: Perseverance looks a lot from the outside like the Curiosity mission does. In fact, we use a lot of the same this the same parts, in many cases, some spare parts we had leftover from Curiosity for Perseverance. But like my, you know, my smartphone from 10 years ago, it kind of looks the same from the outside, but it's a little bit bigger, it's a little bit heavier, it's a lot smarter and has a lot of cameras, a lot more cameras on it. And that's kind of what Perseverance has going forward as well to go to a site like Jethro crater, which is really rough and has that delta in the middle that which to me looks like a 200 foot cliff, cliff face sitting in the middle of the Delta, we had to you know, we had to increase our technology and entry descent landing to make sure we could go somewhere like Joe's road safely. So one of the big things we've added is something called train welted navigation. Whereas in the past, we've kind of taken pictures on the way down and just kind of use it and look to those movies later kind of for fun. This time now perseverance will actually use those pictures on the way down and based on its own figure out where to fly to figure out where the safe places are, and reach those once we enter the power plate portion with our rockets. And of course, the last part of entry descent landing will be very much like curiosity where we will dangle the rover below our Rocket Power jetpack. Put the rover right down on its wheels.

BF: Because at the time delay between Earth and Mars, you are not able to physically land or drive or make the decision. So is this all based on AI?

AC: Absolutely. In terms of, you know, as you're mentioning right, at the time we land, it'll be about 10 and a half minutes for a signal from Perseverance to get all the way to Earth. So and then another 10 and a half minutes, if you wanted to send a command back to Perseverance. So imagine trying to drive your RC car with it 10 and a half minute, one way and another 10 and a half minute delay, you just can't do it. So Perseverance has to land herself. It has to be done autonomously.

BF: So really cool science. You mentioned the Delta, the crater there, so you're gonna do some rock and soil samples, study the geology, the climate, and then bring some of those samples back to Earth. how's that gonna happen?

AC: Yeah, so Perseverance is the first leg of a sample return mission. This is a giant relay race, where we want to go and find samples that have the evidence, we're looking for those signs that pass Like, for a future mission to pick up those samples, we'll store them in these sealed tubes for a future mission to pick up, launch off the surface of Mars that will rendezvous with an orbiter to bring those samples back to Earth.

BF: That's exciting. And there's a new sidekick. Tell me about the helicopter. Why this is such a big first for NASA?

AC: Absolutely, we've got a helicopter called Ingenuity, which is kind of like a little drone sidekick for Perseverance. We hope to show and demonstrate this kind of experiment in many ways that we can fly on Mars that we can do this first aircraft controlled flight on another planet. Now, Mars itself has challenges for flying things. Even though the gravity is a little less, the atmosphere is really thin. The atmosphere is about 100 times more less dense than Earth. So as a result, it's really hard to get enough lift when you're spinning those blades around on your helicopter to actually fly. Imagine trying to fly your helicopter here on Earth at 100,000 feet. They're just really thin and difficult to fly. So as a result, we don't know if this is going to work. But this is our kind of grand experiment, we have a really light helicopter with big blades, they'll be spinning really fast. And we hope to fly that, that drone safely on Mars. But again, as he kind of noted, we're not there, like, you know, drones here on Earth, we have a joystick and you can kind of fly it around yourself. It's got to fly itself autonomously on Mars, we can't be there to fly for it. So that's another challenge for flying on Mars.

BF: The challenges are numerous. So let me rewind real quick on when it comes to the actual landing or even the approach. What if there's one of these colossal dust storms in progress? Will that impact the landing opportunity? And can Perseverance stay in orbit, or is this going to be one shot?

AC: Perseverance is on a direct directory once we're off the launch vehicle. We're heading into Mars on February 18. So that there are dust storms, we're prepared to deal with them. We are monitoring the atmosphere as we go. Certainly in the last few days, we're going to be looking at that Martian weather report every day as we go. But we've really designed our entry descent landing system to be very resilient to dust storms and just events on Mars. We think we have the ability with our guided entry system and with the rest of our landing technology to kind of take what Mars can throw at it. Or that we happen to know that we're landing in a season where dust storms really just aren't very prevalent. There have never there's never been in our recorded history for this site, a dust storm that has hit this site at a time of year that we're going to land.

BF: What concerns you the most about the mission?

AC:  You know, as the lead of the ascent landings team, and knowing that we'd survived that seven minutes of terror, of course, is the thing that keeps me up at night. There's a million ways in which things can go wrong, and one way it can go right. So we're always searching to find that one way.

BF: We're gonna have our fingers crossed, that's for sure.  Opportunity died after a big dust storm just blocked the solar panels from being able to be charged. So is Perseverance solar powered or is there some nuclear power or another power supply?

AC: Perseverance is powered much the same way. Curiosity was with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator on the back. So we're pretty robust to dust storms. We are not dependent on solar power once we're on the ground to keep the rover going.

BF: How long is the mission plan, how long do you expect Perseverance to persevere?

AC: The primary mission is one Mars year, which is about two Earth years. All the hardware is guaranteed, the warranty is good for about a year and a half of Mars year, so about three Earth years. That being said, though, we hope that the missions, much like our past missions, like Curiosity, which is still going eight years later, and any of our other rovers, which have lasted quite a bit longer than their sticker lifetimes, will manage to keep going to persevere through whatever Mars can throw at it, and complete its mission.

BF: Two more really quick questions. I hear they're spacesuit samples that will be part of Perseverance and that's going to help maybe get us ready for human life to arrive on Mars. Talk about that.

AC:  The spacesuit samples are part of the SHERLOC experiment. So I'll certainly be interested in taking a look at what, what how those materials react to being on Mars. But there are many other things that we are doing as well to help advance human exploration. Part of it is in the landing system itself, we need to learn how to land bigger and better things in tough places and want to make sure we do it safely. So the addition of our trained relative navigation system, that ability to fly to safe spots, identify and fly to safe spots on the way down is a big piece of that. So that's kind of one step. Another big thing is this instrument called MOXIE. We actually have an instrument on there that can take the atmosphere of Mars, which is 95% or so carbon dioxide and use that and converted into oxygen so we can generate oxygen on the surface of Mars. So we're going to demonstrate that technology, potentially for human use that way with humans wouldn't have to bring the oxygen that we need to breathe to Mars. Additionally, we can produce oxygen potentially, for propulsion systems as well. So we're kind of trying to figure out if we have the technology or can develop the technology and demonstrate the technology to live off the land on Mars.

BR: And will the mission be run out of JPL for its entirety?

AC: That's correct. JPL is operating the mission for NASA.