NASA Mars Rover Set for Launch This Weekend
"Power hungry" robot will hunt for signs Mars could have hosted life.
(Related: "Viking Mission May Have Missed Mars Life, Study Finds.")
The compact car-size, 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) robot is due to lift off Saturday from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket at 10:02 a.m. ET. If anything delays tomorrow's lift-off, NASA has until December 18 to attempt the launch.
If the launch goes smoothly, the rover will be the first NASA craft to land on another planet using an innovative design dubbed the sky crane, which will lower the rover to the surface on cables in a similar fashion to a helicopter lowering a payload.
NASA needed a new landing system because Curiosity is nearly twice the size and five times heavier than its cousins, the Mars rovers Spirit
