Nasa's next Mars rover will be aimed at one of the planet's deepest craters.
The MSL-Curiosity vehicle weighs almost a tonne and is the size of a Mini Cooper, and will carry instruments to study whether Mars had the conditions in the past to support microbial life.The US space agency has selected an equatorial depression called Gale Crater to investigate that question.
The rover will launch from Florida in November and will arrive at the Red planet in August 2012.
Gale Crater is about 155km in diameter, and its lowest point is about 4.6km below datum, the reference point on Mars from which all other elevations are measured.
The landing zone will be much narrower than the crater's width. But Nasa has high confidence the rocket-powered descent system designed for Curiosity can put it inside a target zone less than 20km across.
If this skycrane, as it is known, works as planned, the rover will be delivered close to the central peak of the crater. This is a huge mountain that contains layers of deposits that should offer an impressive view of millions of years of Martian geological history.
At its base, the robot should find abundant quantities of clay minerals that will give fresh insight into the very wet early epoch of the Red Planet. Above the clays, the deposits change to sulphates, which relate to a period in time when Mars was still wet but was beginning to dry out.
Curiosity is currently being prepared for its November launch at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center.
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