Giant rover launched to Mars by NASA

Nasa has launched the most capable machine ever built to land on Mars. The near one-tonne rover, tucked inside a capsule, left Florida on an Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 local time (15:02 GMT). 

Nicknamed Curiosity, the rover will take eight and a half months to cross the vast distance to its destination. If it can land safely next August, the robot will then scour Martian soils and rocks for any signs that current or past environments on the planet could have supported microbial life.

The Atlas flight lasted almost three-quarters of an hour.

By the time the encapsulated rover was ejected on a path to the Red Planet, it was moving at 10km/s (6 miles per second).

Spectacular video taken from the upper-stage of the rocket showed it drifting off into the distance. NASA received a first communication from the cruising spacecraft about 50 minutes after lift-off through a tracking station in Canberra, Australia.

Controllers will command a course correction manoeuvre in two weeks to refine the trajectory to the Red Planet.

The rover - also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) - is due to arrive at the Red Planet on 6 August 2012 (GMT). Then landing safely is the hard part of the mission.

One senior space agency official this week called Mars the "Death Planet" because so many missions have failed to get down in one piece. The Americans, though, have a good recent record and they believe a new rocket-powered descent system will be able to place the rover very precisely in one of the most exciting locations on the planet.

It is being aimed at a deep equatorial depression called Gale Crater, which contains a central mountain that rises some 5km (3 miles) above the plain below. The crater was chosen as the landing site because satellite imagery has suggested that surface conditions at some point in time may have been benign enough to sustain micro-organisms.

MSL is equipped with 10 sophisticated instruments to study the rocks, soils and atmosphere in Gale Crater.

The $2.5bn (£1.6bn) mission is funded for an initial two Earth years of operations, but MSL-Curiosity has a plutonium battery and so should have ample power to keep rolling for more than a decade. It is likely the mechanisms on the rover will wear out long before its energy supply.

SOME OF THE FACTS ABOUT THE MISSION

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