[dragnet2]

I'm looking forward to this mission.

Mars Rover Curiosity, Front View

This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011. The location is inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Preparations are on track for shipping the rover to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in June and for launch during the period Nov. 25 to Dec. 18, 2011.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. This mission will land Curiosity on Mars in August 2012. Researchers will use the tools on the rover to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

[LibLieSlayer]

The actual tires that will be used on the lander will have those same types of slots in them... Do you know what those slots print out in the dirt when they roll? They spell out the letters JPL.

LLS

[LibLieSlayer]

In Morse Code.

LLS

[Oatka]

Number 5 is alive! :-)

[MediaMole]

This sort of exploration should be the focus of NASA. We should be sending robot explorers to all the planets to expand our knowledge.

Low Earth orbit should be in the hands of the private sector. As long as the government is in charge, we’ll be able to count the number of space ships on one hand.