NASA’s Curiosity Rover Will Inspect Mars’s Gale Crater In 2012

Houston, we have a destination! After much design, testing and budget-wrangling, the NASA Curiosity Rover now “knows” where it will land and explore come August 2012. The crater is called Gale, and it’s a promising site for water and life.

Mostly water though, as the features found in and around the 96-mile-wide crater were believed to have been formed by water. Signs of life, past or present, would be the indescribably awesome gravy covering all other potential discoveries at the site. [USA Today Image: AFP/Getty Images]