[U] We Will Have Live Video -- From The Cape, Beginning At 6 AM CDT...

Please join us here, or on NASA.TV. . .

By 7:15 AM Central, I'd expect that CNN and some network feeds will cover it. Launch is set for 7:35 AM.

. . . .We have liftoff, and now safely into stable Earth orbit. . . Next stop: Mars! The weather looks good for launch, too -- more to come. . .

Now do go get a good night's sleep -- up and at it early, mañana!

नमस्ते

Video [Age 9 And Up Appropriate]: "How To... Draw It!" -- A Mars Rover Arts Tutorial -- And Coloring Book "Opportunity"...

I sure wish these resources would have been available when mine were little -- or even when. . . I was of that age.

In any event, we are now less than 24 hours away from liftoff -- for Barsoom, and so here is more home-educational / interplanetary space science / art class fodder:

. . . .Mars beckons and NASA is ready to heed the call of the Red Planet with the upcoming launch of the Perseverance rover. But before launch day, kids of all ages can put their imagination to paper via the latest edition of NASA Space Crafts. . . .

As ever, be excellent to one another, and grow now, tall, strong, smart and most of all. . . wise. Grinning. . . .

नमस्ते

"Green Lights, Across The Board" -- For NASA To Head To Mars, Thursday Morning...

We are now getting nearer to the third nation's July 2020 Mars liftoff: this time. . . it is us: NASA.

With a rover named by a middle school kid in Virginia (and a helicopter named by a young woman STEM student, a high schooler -- in Alabama!), this mission is the most complex our nation has ever attempted -- in heading to Mars. This rover is much larger and heavier, and will -- it is hoped -- launch a 'copter, as well, to fly over the Barsoomian landscape in a search for past evidence of. . . organics. That's daring truly. . . mighty things, indeed.

Top it all off with the idea that we intend to land it inside an old impact crater from a meteor, to get right on top of. . . four billion year old crust level rocks. [When Curiosity was on the launchpad, we declined this landing site, as we didn't have enough obstacle avoidance software / confidence, to choose it. Now two decades later -- we are affirmatively choosing to trust the software and hardware in a tight landing footprint.]

Here's the latest, from a local Florida TV outlet, after NASA's three separate press conferences on the mission's various aspects, today:

. . . .NASA is expected to launch its new Mars rover, Perseverance, on Thursday, July 30. The car-size Perseverance, NASA’s fifth Mars rover, is the heaviest and largest the space agency has ever sent to the red planet.

Perseverance is set to lift off at 7:50 a.m. on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.

It is expected to land on Mars in February 2021. Its main job is to seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth. . . .

We will have a live link to NASA-TV, here come about 6 AM EDT, on Thursday. Stay positive; stay hopeful. . . be unafraid. Let us move. . . forward.

नमस्ते