Nasa's Mars rover Perseverance, the most advanced robotic astrobiology lab ever flown to another world, neared the end of its seven-month, 470-million-km journey on Wednesday, on target for a daredevil landing attempt on the red planet.

Hurtling through space across the last 240,000km 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...