Countdown begins: Curiosity’s Landing on Red Planet

Curiosity will rock the world. Finally ending its journey, NASA’s robotic spacecraft Curiosity rover is landing toward Red Planet, Mars, hoping to give great and significant scientific results about the geological history of Mars.

Curiosity, launched on Nov. 26, 2011, is first step towards futuristic manned Mars missions, loaded with ingenious new instruments, facilitating knowledge of the environment, the radiation environment, the chemistry of the surface along with video images for the first time.

It is for the first time that a robotic spacecraft will use nuclear power, making an International mission contains parts from Russia, Spain and Canada.

10 feet long and weight of 899 kg, the rover will travel 352 million miles to land on Mars, estimating cost of 2.5 billion dollars

According to source, the pull of gravity will accelerate the spacecraft to 20,921.5 km per hour in upcoming days and early on 6August, Monday morning EDT , it is scheduled to land the rover on the surface. The Gale Crater will be its new home, just south of the equator.

The members of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory team have much expectation by this project. Torsten Zorn, a robotics engineer with JPL told reporters, Curiosity’s target is to find life on Mars. The rover is equipped with a drill to gather samples underground and send them to a self-contained lab to determine Mars’ geological conditions and changes, and if there are any microorganisms present on the planet.

The lab with its own equipment will test the Mars soil samples to study possibility of Mars as habitual planet, but bring samples back to Earth for accessing future missions for more deep study.