Today, NASA announced the selection of the landing site for Curiosity, our newest and fanciest Mars rover. The robot will be heading to Gale crater, which scientists think might have been a giant lake, and where there was a giant Martian lake, there just might have been slightly less giant Martian fish.

Unfortunately, Curiosity has a very low chance of spotting any of these Martian fish that I just made up, but there is the potential for rover to find traces of organic compounds in the sediments at the bottom of the crater that would indicate that there may have been life there at some point. Organic compounds or not, Gale crater has many other things to offer a curious robot, most notably a peak at the center of the crater that's higher than Mount Rainier, and contains eons of exposed layering that'll be like reading Mars' geologic history page by page as the rover climbs upward.

Curiosity is about the size of a Mini Cooper, and it's designed to drive around on Mars analyzing rocks and taking snapshots for at least two Earth years. Instead of solar panels, the rover is powered by a radioisotope thermal generator with a minimum usable lifespan of 14 years. Considering that the previous generation of Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) had a primary mission length of a mere 90 days and Opportunity is still going after nearly 2,800 days (!) even with dust-prone solar panels, it seems safe to assume that Curiosity will be around for at least a couple decades, by which time humans will have shown up to give it a well-deserved pat on the back.

We should also mention that the final selection of Gale crater as a landing site isn't just about the science: the crater also offers "a visually dramatic landscape," which means we're going to be seeing lots of absolutely incredible pics soon after the rover lands on Mars in August of 2012.

Via MSL