The landing--or the crash--should be confirmed by about at 10:31 PDT (that's 1:31 EDT on August 6). Here's what you may want to know about this venture.

The rover, named "Curiosity," and its spacecraft will plummet into the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph, then use a huge parachute to slow its decent to about 200 mph.

The spacecraft will deploy a kind of hovercraft with retrorockets that will lower Curiosity down to the surface at Gale Crater, then whisk itself away from the rover landing site to crash elsewhere on Mars. Curiosity will unfold itself and begin roving on the surface of Mars to search for evidence that the planet is or ever has been capable of supporting microbial life.

The rover actually is expected to land around 10:17 p.m. PDT, but it takes about 14 minutes for signals to make it from Mars to Earth. For a detailed listing of key technical events tonight, visit