so this is the ljungqvist environment we will look at with msl.one of the fantastic things about the rover is we can go a long way and this allows us to grow towards places where the rocks arbiter exposed, like climbing the cliffs. we got to go to those places for the first time on mars. so the area of the most scientific interest is at the base of the mountain which we are zooming into here and there we see signatures of clay and soviet salt and those are key minerals that tell us about the environment on mars and the interaction of border with that environment and it's critical to have that ability. so the rover will go towards the mountains, the early years we hope to see variations in the mineral that will tell how the minerals forma, halvey environment changed through time, and based on the signature from the orbital instruments, we expect to find variations, particularly in the sulphate salts which will tell us about the water, how concentrated it was, whether it be fabricated in the sources of the water. and that will give a history of the

i want to remind you that you can find all this information on www.nasa.gov/msl. there is an incredible google mars site. i want to thank all of the folks across this great country and worldwide were working on this mission. particularly the folks at the kennedy space station who will take us back to mars. leeson gentleman. [applause] -- ladies and gentlemen. [applause] okay, let's go to the phone line with irene. irene, with reuters. we will come back. go ahead, eric. give your name and affiliation. >> some people in your son's team are saying that this could even be a bathtub that was once filled all the way to the top with water. others are worried that maybe some of these wateree signs could just be easy these watery signs could just be -- these watery signs could just be something else. >> we will get answers to questions you're asking. right now, we have apostasies -- we have hypothesis. we can make estimates of the where water may have been present in. in the year that we arrive at the gail landing site, we continue to refine our hypothesis and come up with

previous missions there have been landing zones of to 10 times larger than msl. this will allow us to snub this up closer to very important sites that the scientists would like to explore. then we restart the engines. then we go into tower defense mode here. this is what you saw in the previous picture. when we 0 out of our horizontal philosophy, we will lower it down on cable. we touch that down to the surface. -- -- then we zero that out on the horizontal stage. we will then get it out of the way so it does not affect the chemical analysis equipment. this will be several hundred millimeters away. then it is prepared to execute the mission by driving around. it has the ability to drive a lot on the surface is important. driving many kilometers around the landing site allows you to explore a lot of different you logic settings. and learn a lot about the history of for they have been on the surface. we have taken that ability, which was a bonus and built it into the baseline, nominal mission. we intend to drive quite a bit. in terms of how to select the landing si

also like to point out we have a full-size model msl on the display at the far end. you can look at that at a press conference as well as protecting the many programs we have going on today in our annual march day program. yes this is all of the museum talking about the research that our group does on mars and generally about mars. with that, i like to begin this discussion by introducing a message that -- an asset chief scientist. -- nasa chief scientist. >> thank you and thank you for hosting this event. i love this museum. every time i come in here, i am a kid again. i look around at all the incredible and exciting stuff. since i have become chief scientist at nasa, i even got to nurture that child that much more. is a great event and a wonderful venue and i really appreciate that. i want to start just by saying, a lot of attention has been given in the last week's, months coming years perhaps, even, to the event that concluded yesterday, with the landing of the space shuttle, the safe, so successful landing of the shuttered it marked the turning of the page to a

i want to remind you that you can find all this information on www.nasa.gov/msl. there is an incredible google mars site. i want to thank all of the folks acro this great country and worldwide were working on this mission. particularly the folks at the kennedy space station who will take us back to mars. leesonentleman. [applause] -- ladies and gentlemen. [applause] okay, let's go to the phone line with irene. irene, with reuters. we will come back. go ahead, eric. give your name and affiliation. >> some people in your son's team are saying that thi could even be a bathtub that was once filled all the way to the top with water. others are worried that maybe some of these wateree signs could just be easy these watery signs could just be -- these watery signs could just be something else. >> we will get answers to questions you're asking. right now, we have apostasies -- we have hypothesis. we can make estimates of the where water may have been present in. in the year that we arrive at theail landing site, we continue to refine our hypothesis and come up with partic