NASA Langley waits for Mars launch

HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) - On Saturday, NASA plans to launch an Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and begin a 350 million mile journey to Mars.

It's payload: the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover.

The journey to Mars should take 8 and a half months, but NASA Langley researchers have been working on the project for about 10 years.

David Way leads the Entry, Descent and Landing team at Langley. He and his team have conducted numerous computer simulations of the mars landing.

"We model the vehicle in a computer and we practice thousands of times landing on the surface of Mars," Way said.

Actually, they have run about 4 million simulated landings since the beginning of the year.

NASA Langley's Michelle Munk works as deputy project manager for the team that designed and built the instrument suite onboard the Mars Science Lab. She said the lab will measure pressure and temperature as the MSL lands on the surface of the red planet.

"There are a lot of unknowns when you send a vehicle to Mars, particularly Mars Science Laboratory," Munk said. "It's the biggest rover we've ever sent. It's as big as a Mini Cooper."

More than 100 researchers and technicians at NASA Langley have been involved with this latest mission to Mars.