Mars Science Lab - 'Curiosity' - Robotic Rover - Lands on Red Planet August 6

MSL Curiosity will try to land at the base of Gale Crater and then climb the mountain at its centre

The rover, tucked inside its protective shell, will hit the atmosphere at well over 12,000mph

Come August, we'll be right in the middle of the London Olympics - the greatest show on Earth. But  I am just as interested in  the greatest show off Earth.  This will be the landing on Mars of Nasa's Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

America has despatched the biggest ever robotic rover to the Red Planet and it is due to touch down right in the middle of  the Olympic spectacular. Mark your calendar for Monday August 6th for the landing. Curiosity is the latest spacecraft to come out of  NASA; Launched from Cape Canaveral last November, this 900kg behemoth is about half-way to its destination.

Curiosity - Mars Science Laboratory

• Project costed at $2.5bn; will see initial surface operations lasting two Earth years
• Onboard plutonium generators will deliver heat and electricity for at least 14 years
• 75kg science payload more than 10 times as massive as those of earlier US Mars rovers
• Equipped with tools to brush and drill into rocks, to scoop up, sort and sieve samples
• Variety of analytical techniques to discern chemistry in rocks, soil and atmosphere
• Will try to make first definitive identification of organic (carbon rich) compounds
• Even carries a laser to zap rocks; beam will identify atomic elements in rocks

The $2.5bn robot is by far the most capable machine yet built to touch another world. It's packed with scientific instrumentation and even carries a laser to zap rocks to determine their chemistry.
Its great bulk means engineers have had to design a new type of landing mechanism for Curiosity. They call it the "skycrane". It's a kind of rocket-powered cradle that will hover over the Martian surface and gently lower the rover to the ground. But to get into this position, the mission first has to survive what Dr Elachi ( mission leader and head of the Jet Propulsion Lab) calls the "six minutes of terror" - the fiery entry into the Martian atmosphere and the herculean effort to slow the speed of the descent to zero with the aid of a heatshield, a parachute and those retrorockets on the skycrane.
"We'll be very nervous. Landing on another planet is not a walk in the park," the JPL director says.
"It's roughly a one-tonne rover. With the heatshield and the carrier, it will be about three tonnes of mass, coming in at a speed of 12,000mph and we have to land softly within less than six minutes.

"To give you an idea about the energy when you are coming at 12,000mph with that kind of mass - that's the equivalent of 25 high speed trains going at full speed. That's the amount of energy we have to dissipate in those six minutes so we can land softly on the surface.  "The accuracy with which we have to point, to be at the right angle and the right location, is equivalent to me being in Los Angeles and hitting a golf ball to St Andrews here in the UK, and the ball going straight in the cup.  "That's how accurate we have to have the navigation. And to make it a little bit more challenging, that cup is moving because Mars is moving at high speed."

Illustration of landing

There is a huge amount riding on this rover. President Obama has decided to slash Nasa's Mars budget: down from $587m this year to $360m next year - a 39% reduction. And unless Congress intervenes or the president has a change of heart, this funding profile is expected to remain in place for the duration of his second term (assuming he wins in November).

It means that MSL could be the last American surface mission to the Red Planet for many years. It therefore adds a little extra tension to 6 August. But Dr Elachi remembers well the landing of Nasa's previous Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) in 2004, and the expectation heaped on the agency back then.
 "When we landed Spirit and Opportunity - that was shortly after the Columbia shuttle accident. And there was a lot of people who were saying, 'Nasa has lost its way; Nasa doesn't know how to do things'.  "So, you can imagine the pressure that was on us to show that we can still do bold things. There will be similar pressure with MSL."
"Everything depends on those six minutes. For sure, we're going to land. The question is will the media say we are heroes or bums the following day. It's black or white. There's no in between; either you land safely or you crash."
"Of course, we would have loved to do a 2016 and a 2018 mission jointly with Europe, but the budget situation means that looks unlikely now. Nasa [itself] is looking to a 2018 or 2020 opportunity."
And he added: "There will be a Mars exploration programme. The issue is not 'if', the issue is 'how much'. What capability will we have? Will we be doing orbiters or landers? And on what pace will we be doing them?"