NASA braces Curiosity rover's Mars plunge

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most high-tech Mars rover yesterday zeroed in on the red planet where it was to attempt a tricky celestial gymnastics routine during a "seven minutes of terror" plummet through the atmosphere early Monday.

The Curiosity rover was poised to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. It was to be slowly lowered by cables inside a massive crater in the final few seconds.

NASA was ready for the "Super Bowl of planetary exploration," said Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters.

If all went well, mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory hoped to hear a signal at 1:31 a.m. The space agency warned that confirmation could take longer if an orbiting spacecraft that's supposed to listen for Curiosity during the descent is not in the right place.

Today's touchdown attempt was especially intense because NASA is testing a brand new landing technique. There's also extra pressure because budget woes have forced NASA to rejigger its Mars exploration road map.

"There's nothing in the pipeline" beyond the planned launch of a Mars orbiter in 2013, said former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard, who teaches at Stanford University.

Curiosity was launched to study whether the Martian environment ever had conditions suitable for microbial life. The voyage to Mars took more than eight months and spanned 352 million miles.