Rainier Nuclear Test

NASA Begins Prepping Next-Gen Curiosity Mars Rover

Fully deployed, Curiousity is about 10 feet long. It's been likened to the size of a Mini Cooper.

Starting Sunday, NASA will begin "folding up" and stowing away all the parts of the Rover, including its high-gain antenna, its arm, and the Remote Sensing Mast, which supports Curiosity's two stereo navigation cameras. The cameras are used for driving the Rover.

Just prior to liftoff, NASA engineers will install the nuclear power source that will enable Curiosity to operate for at least one Mars year (687 Earth days, or nearly two Earth years). That will be a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which produces electricity by using the radioactive decay of a supply of plutonium-238.

Curiousity will make an unusual landing on the Red Planet. As shown in the video below, in the final seconds before touchdown, the upper stage of the craft will act as if it were a sky crane, lowering the upright Rover via a tether to Mars' surface.

Although Curiosity inherited many of its design elements from its earlier, smaller relatives, Spirit and Opportunity, it has added equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, then process them and distribute them to onboard test chambers that are contained inside analytical instruments. Some common technology between the past and present Rovers are including six-wheel drive, the suspension system and cameras mounted on a mast, as noted above.

Curiosity, is scheduled to land on Mars in August of 2012. The target "Gale" crater is 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and "holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle," according to NASA. It is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale.

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