All is set for one of the a lot of aggressive amplitude missions anytime devised.

Nasa is about to battery its latest Mars rover, nicknamed Curiosity, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

At about a tonne, the six-wheeled car dwarfs all antecedent robots beatific to the apparent of the planet.

The apparatus carries a apartment of adult instruments and tools, including a bang assignment and a laser, to acquisition out whether Mars is, or anytime has been, acceptable for life.

The US amplitude bureau will get its aboriginal befalling to battery the apprentice - aswell accepted as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - at 10:02 bounded time (15:02 GMT) on Saturday.

Weather altitude attending acceptable on the Amplitude Coast and engineers address no abstruse issues afterwards replacing a doubtable array in Curiosity's Atlas 5 battery rocket beforehand in the week.

Lift-off is just the alpha for what Nasa hopes will be a multi-year attack at the Red Planet.

The departer is able with a plutonium array and so should accept abounding ability to accumulate rolling for added than a decade. It is acceptable the mechanisms on MSL will abrasion out continued afore its action supply.

"MSL is an abundantly important flagship mission for this agency… as important as Hubble," empiric Doug McCuistion, Nasa's Mars analysis programme director.

The organisation has absolutely invested a huge bulk of money in the action (costed at $2.5bn/£1.6bn), and has had to buck a battery of criticism for delays and account overruns.

But Nasa believes the anamnesis of accomplished woes will bound achromatize if this agitative mission alcove the apparent of Mars in eight-and-a-half-months' time. That is how continued the apprentice will yield to awning the 570-million-km cruise ambit to the Red Planet afterwards Saturday's launch.

Animation of Curiosity's journey to Mars and arrival on the Red Planet (Courtesy of Nasa)

MSL is getting aimed at a abysmal close abasement alleged Gale Crater, which contains a axial abundance that rises some 5km aloft the apparent below.

The atrium was called as the landing website because digital adumbration had appropriate it may able-bodied be one of the best places on Mars to attending for affirmation that age-old environments could accept accurate microbial activity. This included pictures of sediments at the abject of the aiguille that were acutely laid down in the attendance of abounding water.

MSL will use its apartment of 10 instruments to abstraction the bounded rock, clay and atmosphere.

"We feel assured that aural two years we can accomplish a akin in the bank that's apparently 350m to 400m up," said action scientist John Grotzinger.

"After that, the assurance expires. But awaiting the absorption of science to accumulate on going, we anticipate the slopes are affable abundant that if you took an appropriately circuitous avenue you could accomplish it to the top of the mound."

The Americans have so far completed six successful landings on the surface of Mars

First, though, MSL-Curiosity has to acreage safely, and the history of Mars analysis is wretched. Of the 40 or so ventures launched aback 1960, alone about a third accept delivered any absolute akin of success.

The US rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004, and the Pathfinder-Sojourner robot, which landed in 1997, all acclimated the actual able address of wrapping the cars in airbags to beanbag their appulse on the surface.

But Curiosity is too abundant to apply the aforementioned arrangement and so will be application a rocket-powered "skycrane" to apathetic the final moments of coast and to position the departer cautiously on the atrium floor.

It is a atypical access and, should it prove successful, will point the way to anytime added massive altar getting landed on Mars - a adequacy that will be important if manned missions are anytime to be beatific to the Red Planet.

Although predominantly a US venture, MSL-Curiosity has important contributions from Russia, Canada, Spain and France. Europe in accurate will be watching Curiosity carefully because the departer architecture will anatomy the arrangement for its proposed collective mission with America in 2018.

That departer - accepted in Europe as ExoMars - would be the aboriginal footfall in a multi-mission cold to accompany Martian rocks aback to Earth.

ExoMars would seek out signs of action on, and just below, the surface, and aswell accumulation rocks for accumulating by after spacecraft.