NASA’s next Mars mission, the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover, will leave Earth at the end of this year to reach its destination- 96-mile-wide Gale Crater on Mars.

Equipped with 17 cameras and 10 different science instruments, the car-sized rover, which is also being called Curiosity, is expected to reach the Red Planet in August 2012 to look for evidence that the area once had supporting conditions for microbial life.

The exact target for Curiosity's landing is the foot of a mountain that rises upward nearly three miles at the center inside the crater that lie at 4.5° south 137.4° east.

Speaking on the decision to land the rover at the foot of the Martian mountain, project scientist John P. Grotzinger said, “It’s a broad, low, moundlike shape. What it means is we can drive up it with a rover. So this might be the tallest mountain anywhere in the solar system that we could actually climb with a rover.”

Previously, NASA has sent three rovers to Mars to look for evidence that the glacial and dusty planet was once warmer and wet and was supporting a resilient form of life.

NASA recently ended its three-decade old manned space shuttle program to focus on deeper space projects such as sending man to Mars.