NASA launches super-size rover (CURIOSITY) to Mars

• A super-size rover zoomed toward Mars on an 8-month, 354 million-mile (570 million-kilometre) journey Saturday, the biggest, best equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet.
• NASA's six-wheeled, one-armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth's next-door neighbour might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life.
• The 1-ton Curiosity 10 feet (3 meters) long, 9 feet (2.7 meters) wide and 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall at its mast is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and with unprecedented skill, analyze them right on the spot.