Countdown ticking for launch of Mars rover
Credit: Spaceflight Now
It's launch day for dispatching the most advanced roving vehicle to the surface of another world -- the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft aboard the Atlas 5 vehicle from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is scheduled for 15:02 GMT. NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover, the most complex and scientifically powerful robotic spacecraft ever built to explore the surface of another world, is on a high-stakes mission to look for organic compounds and signs of past or present habitability.
 Credit: NASA TV |
If all goes well, the nuclear-powered rover will reach the red planet next August, slamming into the thin martian atmosphere at some 13,200 mph for a nail-biting descent to the floor of 100-mile-wide crater dominated by a towering 3-mile-high central peak stacked with rocky layers of martian history.
