The newest rover to explore Mars is approaching the Red Planet for what is set to be the most complicated landing yet at 0531 GMT Monday, dpa reported. Launched in November, the Curiosity rover is part of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, designed to determine whether conditions on the planet were ever right for life. In what the head of NASA's Mars programme called a "daring “operation, the space agency plans to land its largest-ever rover, weighing 900-kilograms, by carefully lowering it to the surface on cables from a giant jet pack, in a so-called "sky crane manoeuvre. " NASA has promoted the dramatic landing in a video game and is urging space fans across the United States to gather to watch the arrival live, including on the giant screens in New York's Times Square. The landing will be followed by orbiting satellites already deployed around Mars. Zooming towards the surface at more than 20,000 kilometres per hour, the craft carrying Curiosity will decelerate using thrusters and a parachute. Along the way it will jettison its cruising rockets, heat shield and outer shell - going through six different vehicle configurations - before gently lowering the rover to the Martian surface like a spider on a thread. The complicated landing manoeuvre is being employed with a rover for the first time. Earlier efforts - with much smaller rovers -always involved an airbag-like structure. The mission will spend at least one Martian year - nearly two Earth years - studying Mars' Gale crater, in a bid to transition from the search for water to a wider search for the presence of other ingredients necessary for life, such as carbon. It will also study minerals on the surface to get an idea about what conditions were like on the planet millions of years ago.
