THE cramped room smells of hot breath. About 50 people are clustered in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, straining for a better view of the desert outside. The silence is only broken when one of them muffles a cough with the crook of his arm, a gesture that exposes the dark stain at his armpit.
Down on the ground outside, gleaming pickup trucks mingle with dusty cars, all with their windows down so that the glass doesn't shatter with the force of what's coming next.
A high-stakes test is about to begin at China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station in the Mojave desert in California. It will gauge the performance of a vital new technology for landing on Mars, and the results will shape the future of the planet's exploration.
You might remember the "seven minutes of terror" in August last year as NASA's Curiosity Rover hurtled through the ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
