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Newest Mars rover ready for launch
Nov 10, 2011, 21:57 GMT
Washington - The next-generation Mars rover is on course to be launched this month on an eight-month journey to the Red Planet, NASA said Thursday.
The Mars Science Laboratory mission is due to launch on November 25 from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The probe is already attached to its rocket and is ready for its trip, said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars programme.
'It's not your father's rover,' he said.
The more than 900-kilogramme Curiosity rover is the 'most complex object ever placed on surface of another planet' and will conduct a two-year mission to Mars, McCuistion said.
Curiosity's mission is to follow-up on confirmations of water on Mars by past rovers and determine if areas habitable to life ever existed on the planet.
The rover is outfitted with a drill that will allow it bore into rocks and other instruments to help answer that question, said Ashwin Vasavada, principal scientist on the project.
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