NASA Mars Rover Arrives in Florida After Cross-Country Flight

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

George Diller 321-867-2468
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
george.h.diller@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-191 June 23, 2011

NASA Mars Rover Arrives in Florida After Cross-Country Flight

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-191&cid=release_2011-191

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's next Mars rover has completed the journey from its California
birthplace to Florida in preparation for launch this fall.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, also known as Curiosity, arrived late Wednesday night at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center aboard an Air Force C-17 transport plane. It was accompanied by the
rocket-powered descent stage that will fly the rover during the final moments before landing on Mars.
The C-17 flight began at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif., where the boxed hardware had
been trucked from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The rover's aeroshell -- the protective covering for the trip to the Red Planet -- and the cruise stage,
which will guide it to Mars, arrived at Kennedy last month. The mission is targeted to launch from
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18. The car-size rover will land on Mars
in August 2012.

"The design and building part of the mission is nearly behind us now," said JPL's David Gruel, who
has managed Mars Science Laboratory assembly, test and launch operations since 2007. "We're
getting to final checkouts before sending the rover on its way to Mars."

The rover and other spacecraft components will undergo more testing before mission staff stack them
and fuel the onboard propulsion systems. Curiosity should be enclosed in its aeroshell for the final
time in September and delivered to Kennedy's Launch Complex 41 in early November for integration
with a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. Its 10
science instruments include two for ingesting and analyzing samples of powdered rock delivered by
the rover's robotic arm. During a prime mission lasting one Martian year -- nearly two Earth years --
researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region has had environmental
conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether
life existed.

JPL built the rover and descent stage and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's
Launch Services Program at Kennedy. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages
JPL for NASA.

For more information about the mission, visit: www.nasa.gov/msl .

To follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter, visit: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity or
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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