NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and its Atlas 5 rocket roll out from Launch Complex 41's Vertical Integration Facility at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the morning of Nov. 25, 2011. The rover launched on Nov. 26.
The Curiosity rover and its rocket roll toward the launchpad on Nov. 25, 2011, to prepare for launch a day later.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and its Atlas 5 rocket sit on the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 on Nov. 25, 2011.
A closeup of NASA's Curiosity Rover and its Atlas 5 rocket as they sit on the launchpad on Nov. 25, 2011, a day before lifting off.
Clara Ma, who named the Curiosity rover as a sixth-grader back in 2009, poses with a scale model of the robot and a full-size mockup of one of its wheels at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 25, 2011. The rover launched a day later.
A look at a full-size mockup of one of the Curiosity Mars rover's six wheels. The holes reportedly spell out "JPL" in Morse code; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leading Curiosity's mission. In the background is a model of Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site.
Black-eyed Peas frontman will.i.am (center) watches the launch countdown of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at the Kennedy Space Center press room on Nov. 26, 2011.
The Black-eyed Peas' will.i.am (left), NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver and former astronaut Leland Melvin, NASA's associate administrator for education (right), talk at a NASA tweetup just hours before the Curiosity Mars rover's launch on Nov. 26, 2011.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover lifts off the pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 26, 2011. In the foreground is a tent where NASA held a two-day launch tweetup.
Curiosity and its Atlas 5 rocket pierce the clouds as they rise into the Florida sky on Nov. 26, 2011.
NaSA's Curiosity Mars rover and its Atlas 5 rocket — barely visible at the top of this photo — streak toward space on Nov. 26, 2011.
People broke into applause at Kennedy Space Center's press site when the Curiosity rover's spacecraft separated from its Atlas 5 rocket about 45 minutes after launch on Nov. 26, 2011.
Bill Nye, head of the Planetary Society and former host of the TV show "Bill Nye the Science Guy," stops by the press room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center after the launch of the Curiosity Mars rover on Nov. 26, 2011.
