Curiosity Arrives at NASA Kennedy Space Center

Cape Canaveral, Fla. -- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, known as Curiosity, arrives at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane. Also aboard is the rocket-powered descent stage that will fly the rover during the final moments before landing on Mars. The rover's 10 science instruments will search for habitable environments on Mars that could support life, past or present. The unique rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth, as well as sophisticated chemistry experiments and high-powered microscopes. MSL is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V later this year.