Tashkent, Feb. 18 -- NASA's Mars rover Perseverance, the most advanced robotic astrobiology lab ever flown to another world, neared the end of its seven-month, 293-million-mile (470-million-km) journey on Wednesday (February 17), on target for a daredevil landing attempt on the red planet.

Hurtling through space across the last 150,000 miles (240,000 km) of its voyage, Perseverance was headed for a touchdown set for Thursday inside a vast basin called Jezero Crater, site of a long-vanished Martian lake bed.

Mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles said on Wednesday they were hopeful the six-wheeled, SUV-sized rover would arrive safely on a flat plain beside towering cliffs at the edge of an ancient river del...