Next stop, Mars.

NASAs Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover are preparing to enter the Martian atmosphere, following an 8 month race to the red planet at 8,000 miles per hour. By the time it arrives at Mars, gravity will have accelerated the spacecraft to a whopping 13,200 mph.

NASA must then slow it down.

Following seven minutes of terror beginning at 1:31a.m. EST early Monday morning a reference to the nerve-racking landing NASA has planned, which involves Curiositys screaming race to the surface and a dangle off a rocket-powered sky crane the rover will be set to begin its mission: the study of our planetary neighbor, and the quest for signs of life there.

Curiosity is the culmination of a decade of exploration. We can now begin to move toward finding the fingerprints of life on Mars, said Scott Hubbard, a Stanford University consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

The space agency said Curiosity remains in good health, and was steering so smoothly between planets that a planned minor course correction Saturday wasnt necessary. And with the gravitational pull of Mars already tugging on the spaceship, arrival is being closely monitored by the watchful eyes of mission control.

After flying more than eight months and 350 million miles since launch, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is now right on target to fly through the eye of the needle that is our target at the top of the Mars atmosphere, said Mission Manager Arthur Amador of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

In keeping with a decades-old tradition, peanuts will be passed around the mission control room at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for good luck. The space agency said it was optimistic that everything would go according to plan.

“Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I’m confident,” Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said Saturday. “We have the A-plus team on this. They’ve done everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still exists.”

A Twitter feed for the rover itself happily chirped notice Saturday evening of its imminent arrival at Mars.

Read more from the original source: