NASA plans to send a new rover, Curiosity, on an expedition to Mars in hopes of finding evidence of the possibility of microbial life, NASA officials said at the Jet Propulsion Lab on Thursday.
Curiosity, or the Mars Science Laboratory, is targeted for a Nov. 25-Dec. 11 launch period, after overcoming obstacles that conflicted with its original target launch date of 2009. The mission’s main purpose is to explore a landing site as a potential habitat for life and assess its potential for the preservation of biosignatures (substances that provide evidence of life), NASA said.