"We're on target to fly through the eye of the needle," Arthur Amador, the Mars Science Laboratory mission manager, told reporters at a briefing on Saturday, as Curiosity hurtled to within 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km) of its destination.

Facing deep cuts in its science budget and struggling to regain its footing after cancellation of the space shuttle program - NASA's centerpiece for 30 years - the agency has much at stake in the outcome of the $2.5 billion mission.

Mars is the chief component of NASA's long-term deep space exploration plans. Curiosity, the space agency's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes, is designed primarily to search for evidence that the planet most similar to Earth may have once have harbored ingredients necessary for microbial life to evolve.

(Read by Rosie Tuck. Rosie Tuck is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

双语资讯

(Agencies)

以检测火星上是否曾存在生命组成物质为目标的美国火星探测器“好奇号”经过八个半月的航行，终于在上周日进入其航行的最后阶段，登陆火星。成败在此一举，美航天局称这是他们尝试过的最具挑战的一次着陆。

派往外太空的“好奇号”是第一座携带了一整套完整移动科学实验室的探测器，将于太平洋时间周日晚上10点31分

洛杉矶附近喷气推进实验室的任务控制工程师们承认，将一个重达一吨、装有六个轮子的核驱动探测器完好无损地送入太空是一项十分危险的任务，需要零误差操作。

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