NASA is close to deciding on a landing site for its Mars rover Curiosity mission by narrowing the choices down to 4 landingsites

Scientists in the close-knit Mars research community get one last chance to make their case this week when they gather before the "judges"  the team running the 2.5 billion U.S. dollar mission that will soon suggest a landing site to NASA, the ultimate decider.

"All four of these places are compelling places on Mars to study. There’s not a loser among them," said landing site scientist Matt Golombek of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the meeting’s leaders.

The mission will use rover Curiosity to study whether a selected area will have environmental conditions suitable for life and for preserving evidence about whether extraterrestial life has existed.

Being nuclear-powered, the rover cannot go to a location that has either water or ice within one meter of the surface.

The size of a mini Cooper, Curiosity is scheduled to launch in late November after a two-year delay.

Source: NASA