NASA Ready for November Launch of Car-Size Mars Rover

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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News release: 2011-347 Nov. 10, 2011

NASA Ready for November Launch of Car-Size Mars Rover

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-347&cid=release_2011-347

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, which will examine one of
the most intriguing areas on Mars, is in final preparations for a launch from Florida's Space Coast at
10:25 a.m. EST (7:25 a.m. PST) on Nov. 25.

The Mars Science Laboratory mission will carry Curiosity, a rover with more scientific capability
than any ever sent to another planet. The rover is now sitting atop an Atlas V rocket awaiting liftoff
from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"Preparations are on track for launching at our first opportunity," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science
Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "If weather or
other factors prevent launching then, we have more opportunities through Dec. 18."

Scheduled to land on the Red Planet in August 2012, the one-ton rover will examine Gale Crater
during a nearly two-year prime mission. Curiosity will land near the base of a layered mountain 3
miles (5 kilometers) high inside the crater. The rover will investigate whether environmental
conditions ever have been favorable for development of microbial life and preserved evidence of
those conditions.

"Gale gives us a superb opportunity to test multiple potentially habitable environments and the
context to understand a very long record of early environmental evolution of the planet," said John
Grotzinger, project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena. "The portion of the crater where Curiosity will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by
water-carried sediments. Layers at the base of the mountain contain clays and sulfates, both known to
form in water."

Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as earlier Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The
rover will carry a set of 10 science instruments weighing 15 times as much as its predecessors'
science payloads.

A mast extending to 7 feet (2.1 meters) above ground provides height for cameras and a laser-firing
instrument to study targets from a distance. Instruments on a 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm will
study targets up close. Analytical instruments inside the rover will determine the composition of rock
and soil samples acquired with the arm's powdering drill and scoop. Other instruments will
characterize the environment, including the weather and natural radiation that will affect future
human missions.

"Mars Science Laboratory builds upon the improved understanding about Mars gained from current
and recent missions," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "This mission advances technologies and science that will move us
toward missions to return samples from, and eventually send humans to, Mars."

The mission is challenging and risky. Because Curiosity is too heavy to use an air-bag cushioned
touchdown, the mission will use a new landing method, with a rocket-powered descent stage
lowering the rover on a tether like a kind of sky-crane.

The mission will pioneer precision landing methods during the spacecraft's crucial dive through Mars'
atmosphere next August to place the rover onto a smaller landing target than any previously for a
Mars mission. The target inside Gale Crater is 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25
kilometers). Rough terrain just outside that area would have disqualified the landing site without the
improved precision.

No mission to Mars since the Viking landers in the 1970s has sought a direct answer to the question
of whether life has existed on Mars. Curiosity is not designed to answer that question by itself, but its
investigations for evidence about prerequisites for life will steer potential future missions toward
answers.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Curiosity
was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. Launch management for the mission is the
responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA's
Space Network, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide space
communications services for the rocket. NASA's international Deep Space Network will provide
MSL spacecraft acquisition and communication throughout the mission.

For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl . You can also
follow the mission on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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