NASA last preparations to launch the best equipped robot to Mars.

"The Mission of Curiosity is to determine whether the red planet have the necessary conditions for the development of life. It will be released on Saturday and reach destiny in August 2012."

The Curiosity robot carries within it the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, for its acronym in English). It is the first to use a laser to be able to analyze the rocks inside. It will analyse their gases with a spectrometer that can send data to Earth.

Its name is due to Clara Ma, a school of Kansas who won a contest organized by NASA which picked up the proposals of more than 9,000 students from across the country.

Curiosity will be launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from the platform 41 air base in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

With a ton of weight and three meters in length, it is five times heavier than its predecessors, the Spirit and Opportunity, twins who came to the red planet in January 2004 for signs of water.

Curiosity will search for compounds that contain carbon - one of the main ingredients for life as we know - and evaluate how it was originally. Unlike other robots, it has the necessary equipment to take samples of rocks and soil and process them for himself.

It was designed to be able to overcome obstacles up to 65 centimeters high and advance 200 metres per day.

Some of the novelties is its autonomy. Its long-term power supply gives the mission life expectancy on the surface of Mars in a Martian year equivalent to 687 Earth days, or more.

The launch, initially scheduled for Friday, was delayed until Saturday, November 26 when they detect, the past weekend, that it was necessary to replace one of the batteries of the rocket that carried the robot.

Engineers have a period of launch opportunities until December 18 and expected that everything will continue as planned so that the vehicle arrives to Mars in August 2012.

NASA started planning the MSL Mission in 2003 and during the past eight years, scientists and engineers have built and tested the capabilities of the robot they expect carry planetary research to the next level.

"This vehicle is not only the most capable robot technically sent to another planet, but the more capable scientific Explorer we have sent," said the press Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy MSL project scientist.