NASA shoots for riskier Mars rover landing

11.06.2012
NASA scientists are taking a risk, aiming to land its super closer to its ultimate destination but near a hazardous mountain slope.

"We're trimming the distance we'll have to drive after landing by almost half," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "That could get us to the mountain months earlier."

And they're able to adjust the rover's landing site because, as the robotic rover hurtled through space on its journey to Mars, NASA engineers tested and updated its flight and landing software.

NASA reported that they will send more software upgrades to the Mars rover about a week after it lands.

the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory last November. Dubbed Curiosity, the SUV-size super rover has nearly completed an eight-month journey so it can soon begin its mission to help scientists learn whether life can exist, or has ever existed, on the Red Planet.

, equipped with 10 scientific instruments, is expected to land on Mars in the early morning hours of August 6 to begin a two-year project to collect and analyze soil and rock samples.