LOS ANGELES (AP) - Martian mountain, here Curiosity comes.
The NASA rover has officially kicked off its long-delayed road trip to Mount Sharp, a trek that involves rolling over rocky landscapes.
Since July Fourth, the six-wheel rover has driven 190 feet to the southwest, leaving behind the spot where it spent the past seven months performing science experiments.
From this point on, the team is in a "drive, drive, drive mentality," mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada said Monday.
The journey, expected to last nine months to a year with stops, will take Curiosity through unfamiliar terrain. With the help of images taken from space, mission managers plotted a path that was mostly straight with not a lot of boulders, steep slopes and other potential obstacles.
Still, the drive was expected to be rugged, but Curiosity was built to handle a few bumps, Vasavada said.
Perhaps the trickiest part will come toward the end when Curiosity will have to cross a bank of sand dunes to reach the base of the mountain.
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater near the Martian equator to great fanfare last August with its sights set on the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp rising from the crater floor.
About the size of a car, Curiosity is the most high-tech rover sent to the red planet. At $2.5 billion, it's also the most expensive Mars mission.