• On 18 February, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will land on the Red Planet
• ESA’s Mars orbiters – the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express – are supporting the landing
• TGO will relay important data from Perseverance to Earth as soon as four hours after landing
• Mars Express is monitoring the local conditions at the landing site, Jezero Crater
• Both ESA orbiters are providing context images of the region
• TGO will attempt to image the rover in the weeks after landing

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is due to land on the Red Planet at 21:43 CET on 18 February 2021. In order to communicate with Earth from its landing site in Jezero Crater, the rover will rely on spacecraft orbiting Mars to relay the images and other data it collects back to Earth and pass on the commands from engineers beamed across space in the other direction.