07/17/2012 NASA’s Curiosity rover is on target to arrive on Mars on August 6 for a two-year mission to find out whether microbial life once existed on the Red Planet, the US space agency said.
Landing the car-sized rover is of course no easy task, NASA scientists say.
“The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration,” said the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, John Grunsfeld.
“While the challenge is great, the team’s skill and determination give me high confidence in a successful landing,” Grunsfeld said in a statement.
Curiosity, which NASA scientists have described as a $2.5 billion dream machine, launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in November 2011, and aims to land in Mars’ Gale Crater near Mount Sharp at 0531 GMT on August 6.
The rover, which has six wheels and weighs nearly a ton (900 kilograms), is nearing the end of its 354-million-mile (570 million-kilometer) trek through space.
The vessel transporting Curiosity will glide through the planet’s upper atmosphere, instead of “dropping like a rock” onto Martian soil, in order to ensure as secure and precise a landing as possible.
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Read more here: http://www.omglobe.com/2012/07/17/nasas-mars-rover-two-weeks-from-landing/
