Nasa is making final preparations for the dramatic landing on Mars of its most sophisticated-ever planetary explorer. The car-sized Curiosity rover is on course to land within a 12-mile target zone in the Gale Crater, where it will begin searching for evidence that the planet was once able to support life. Touchdown is scheduled for 6:31am on August 6. In order to reach the surface safely, Nasa has devised a landing procedure that could have come from a sci-fi movie. The space agency describes the manoeuvre as "Curiosity's seven minutes of terror". Engineer Adam Steltzner: "Sometimes when we look at it, it looks crazy." The spacecraft carrying Curiosity is expected to hit the upper atmosphere of Mars at a speed of 13,200mph. It will then rapidly lose speed with a series of steep S-curves, similar to those used by the Shuttle. At an altitude of seven miles, still travelling at 1,000mph, it will deploy the strongest parachute ever made to slow it further. Source: The Coming Crisis
