Nasa Robot To Begin Hunt For Life On Mars Nasa Rover Ready For Mars Mission

Thomas Moore, science correspondent
The most sophisticated robot explorer ever built is set to begin a 350 million mile journey to Mars.
The car-sized buggy will roam the planet's surface looking for signs that the environment could once have supported life - and may still do.
The Curiosity rover has 10 instruments, including a laser, a drill and even a magnifying glass. 
It will survey the landscape for promising rock formations and sediments, and then analyse their mineral content in an on-board laboratory.
Wanda Harding, mission manager for US space agency NASA, said: "The rover is essentially like a geologist in a self-contained laboratory.
"The capabilities that exist are probably the next best thing to sending a human to do the same job."
Nasa hopes to land the rover in August 2012 at the foot of a three-mile-high mountain in the Gale Crater.
Images taken by orbiting spacecraft strongly suggest the area was once covered by water. On Earth, where there is liquid water there is microbial life.
Pamela Conrad, deputy principal investigator, said: "Mars and Earth were made about the same time and yet they've had very different evolutionary pathways.
"We seem to be verdant and full of life and Mars is quite cryptic.
"So we would like to understand a bit about the past of Mars and in fact we'd like to know if Mars has ever been habitable, perhaps in some distant time, perhaps now, beneath the surface."
Curiosity is so big and heavy that Nasa couldn't use airbags to cushion a crash-landing, as has been the case in previous missions.
Instead, the rover will be gently lowered on a rope by a rocket jetpack hovering above the surface.
It has an automatic navigation system to guide itself across the rocky terrain. But mission control will also be able to send commands to the rover - though the radio signals will take 13 minutes to reach the planet.
The mission will cost £1.6bn.
Martin Archer, space scientist at Imperial College in London, said the money will be well spent if it helps to establish whether there is life elsewhere in the universe.
He said: "Is there life out there other than just us on our little rock, a tiny speck in comparison to the Milky Way?
"Mars has fascinated us for years, being our closest neighbour, so it will be interesting to tackle that question in greater detail."