NASA rover Curiosity set to land on Mars

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is aiming to find out whether life-forms can survive on Mars. First, they need to pull off a successful landing of a 1-ton rover named Curiosity.

The vehicle, loaded with the most-sophisticated instruments ever used to explore another world, is scheduled to touch down Monday at about 1:30 a.m. If successful, the $2.5 billion mission is expected by scientists to return a trove of data on the geology of a planet that's been shrouded in myth.

The mission may also help reignite an interest in space that's waned since the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, said Nilton Renno, a mission scientist, bolstering support for U.S. funding for more projects and inspiring a new generation of students to explore the stars.

"You can see in the eyes of the students how excited they get by working on something like this mission," Renno said in a telephone interview. "It's mind-blowing that we can send an instrument to another planet and operate it from earth, understanding something so far away."

By analyzing air, rock and soil samples collected by Curiosity, scientists may be able to tell whether the Mars environment is conducive to life, said Renno, who is also a professor in atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Success isn't a sure bet. Of 19 previous U.S. missions to Mars, six have failed, according to NASA, the agency running the mission. To get there, the rover will undergo a complicated descent and landing sequence never before attempted.The rover's instruments were created to detect the chemistry of life, said Arlin Crotts, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University. The planet has water and an unusual amount of methane in its atmosphere, which may indicate that some sort of organisms may have existed there.