Follow the Curiosity rover as it hunts Martians

If all goes well, Curiosity - NASA's latest roving robotic laboratory - will start exploring Mars in just over a year's time. Top of its to-do list: to seek out life.

Curiosity is due to launch towards the end of this year, and will take eight and a half months to reach the red planet before entering the Martian atmosphere at an incredible speed of over 32,000 kilometres per hour. The craft will have to employ an impressive array of thrusters, parachutes and radar to brake and steer towards its chosen landing site (see video, above).

NASA is seriously considering two possible locations. The first would present Curiosity with the challenge of scaling a ridge of rocks as high as Mount Kilimanjaro before it can go on its way. But it could offer an opportunity to study the way rocks and sediments have been deposited over time. The other is a crater through which a river once flowed, offering the possibility of discovering organic material which could have been buried in the sediment deposited by the river.

The car-sized vehicle will explore the planet's surface for an entire Martian year - 687 Earth days - collecting and analysing samples as it goes. It's crammed with high-tech kit that will help it spot carbon and other possible traces of life - notably a new device called ChemCam, which uses a laser to blast rocks from a distance of up to seven metres, then works out which chemical elements are present by studying the way light scatters off the resulting plume.

If it finds something interesting, Curiosity will either deploy its on-board camera to take a closer look, or use its robotic arm to collect a sample for further analysis. You can check out these tools (and the rest of Curiosity's kit) in the animation above.