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Less Than a Week Remains Before NASA’s Biggest Rover Yet Lands on Mars

NASA’s newest Mars rover is less than a week away from its high-stakes landing on the surface of the Red Planet.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover is scheduled to touch down on Mars at 10:30 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:30 a.m. Aug. 6 EDT, 0530 GMT). The car-size robotic explorer is designed to investigate whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of hosting microbial life.

With six days to go until Curiosity arrives at the Red Planet, project managers are bracing themselves for what NASA calls the riskiest part of the mission: the rover’s harrowing descent through the Martian atmosphere to the ground.

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9 months ago  /  4,445 notes  /  Source: ikenbot