NWT News

Curiosity's landing site - "Quad Map" includes "Yellowknife" Quad 51 of Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover

[excerpt]

As established by the Mars Exploration Program, the main scientific goals of the MSL mission are to help determine whether Mars could ever have supported life, as well as determining the role of water, and to study the climate and geology of Mars.[8][7][8] The mission will also help prepare for human exploration.[8]

Attempting these goals, the Curiosity rover has eight main scientific objectives:

Biological

(1) Determine the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds

(2) Inventory the chemical building blocks of life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur)

(3) Identify features that may represent the effects of biological processes (biosignatures)

Geological and geochemical

(4) Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials

(5) Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils

Planetary process

(6) Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes

(7) Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide

Surface radiation

(8) Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons