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Discovery: Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars

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Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars

06/08/2012 GMT

BBC World Service - Discovery, Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars

Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars – the search for extraterrestrial life steps up.

Nasa's Curiosity robot lands on Mars. Jonathan Amos explores the billion dollar roving laboratory's mission to discover whether the Red Planet was once hospitable to to life.

After the most daring and complex landing of a robot on another planet, the search for evidence of life on Mars enters a new era.  

Nasa's Curiosity rover is now sitting inside Gale Crater, a vast depression close to the Martian equator. 

Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, the one tonne machine is the most sophisticated science robot ever placed on another world.  

Over the coming years Curiosity will climb a mountain at the crater's heart, gathering evidence on one of science's greatest questions – was there ever life on Mars?   

The $2.5 billion project will discover whether Mars once had conditions suitable for the evolution and survival of life.  

BBC Space specialist Jonathan Amos talks to mission scientists about where Curiosity is going and what it will do as it trundles up Mars' Mount Sharp.

(Image: Nasa's Curiosity rover. Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/PA Wire)

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