Nasa has confidence in the MSL landing system curiosity can put the rover down in a safe spot next Nasa Mars rover will be directed to one of the deepest craters on the planet.MSL-curiosity weighs almost a ton and is the size of a Mini Cooper.
It will be instruments to study whether Mars had the conditions in the past to support microbial life.
The U.S. Space Agency has selected an equatorial depression called Gale crater to investigate this issue.
The rover for $2 million will launch from Florida in November.
You must touch down on the red planet in August 2012.
Gale crater is 155 km in diameter, and its point lowest is about 4.6 km below the reference point of reference on Mars since all other elevations are measured.
The landing zone will be much closer than the width of the crater. But Nasa has high confidence in the system of descent of rocket designed to MSL-curiosity can put in a goal less than 20 km in the area.
If this Skycrane, as you know, works as planned, the rover will be around in the central peak of the crater.
It's a huge mountain that contains layers of deposits which must offer an impressive view of millions of years of geological history of Mars.
Continue reading the main storywill also be an incredibly beautiful site... where there are steep cliffs face with the rover will in less deep valleys between them "end quote Dawn Sumner co-chair, MSL, working group of the landing site" what we have learned more than 150 years of exploration is that if it starts at the bottom of the layer stack and go to the upper part and read a novel, "said mission project scientist John Grotzinger, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory."
"We believe that Gale crater is going to be a great novel about the environmental evolution of Mars that offers strong prospects potentially habitable environments discovery, and perhaps even an opportunity to discover organic compounds".
Dr. Grotzinger stressed that the curiosity of the MSL is not a mission of life detection; You can not identify microbes or even microbial fossils. But it can assess whether ancient conditions they could have supported agencies.
This means that Gale must show evidence of the presence of water, a source of energy that forms of life could have been metabolized, and a source of organic compounds with which agencies could have built their structures.
Gale has been chosen because satellite images suggest that it may be one of the best places on Mars to search for these biological conditions.
The Skycrane fall MSL-curiosity to Valley relatively flat at the end of moorings before the blasting by far at a safe distance. The robot will then drive to the base of the central mountain.
In front of him, the rover must be found large quantities of clay minerals that give a fresh view on the very wet beginning time of the red planet. Above the clay deposits change to sulfates, which relate to a period of time when Marte was still wet, but it was beginning to dry out.
There is evidence in the past, the water flowed down the mountain at some point cut a deep ravine and deposit sediment out on the plain.
The rover arrives to investigate all this.
"The number of things that we see in Gale represents a diverse number of environments over a long period of time, possibly tens of hundreds of millions of years, more modern environment," said Dawn Sumner, a geologist at the University of California Davis, us.
"Will also be a site incredibly beautiful - is much like the southwest of United States, areas as Monument Valley where there are steep cliffs face with the rover goes in more valleys between them," explained the co-Chairman of the Working Group of the landing site.
Model drop-down listGale was selected after a rigorous investigation of some 60 competition sites. The selection process took five years and involving some 150 researchers.
Images of high resolution was acquired from the best sites, and Nasa even built models of some of the surfaces of site and dropped a rover simulation evaluate them their suitability.
Michael Watkins, the mission project engineer, said that the expected accuracy of the new entry, descent and landing system meant that the space agency could have chosen any of the major contenders.
"We can control a little the elevator from the vehicle during the inning and we may cancel some unexpected differences in atmospheric drag would cause the landing zone be big", told reporters.
"Previous missions have areas that have been up to 10 times larger than MSL home." MSL is going to land in a 20 km - everywhere. "
MSL-curiosity has been funded for an initial two-year mission. But Nasa's opportunity rover continues to roll on the red planet today, seven years after landing, suggests that the new vehicle can have a long life ahead. In addition, the new vehicle leads a nuclear battery that will provide ample power in a world where dust storms can blight the functioning of the solar panels.
MSL-curiosity is preparing for its launch in November at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center.
Selection reduced potential four - Eberswalde, Gale crater crater, Holden Crater and Mawrth Vallis. Then he came down from Eberswalde crater and crater Gale, with Gale won the play-off final. Jonathan.Amos-Internet@BBC.co.UK
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