National Geographic Channel special takes you to a place where no man has gone before

The National Geographic Channel will will broadcast globally a feature-length special about the Mars exploration rovers on Sunday, Jan 11 at 9pm. The program will feature never-before-seen footage of the mission's preparation and, if all goes to plan, groundbreaking pictures from Mars itself.

Launched toward Mars in June and July this year, the two golf cart-sized rovers named Spirit and Opportunity, will touch down in early January as part of an on-going NASA mission to determine whether or not the planetary environment of Mars can, or ever did, support life.

Managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of California's Institute of Technology for NASA's Office of Space Science, the Mars Exploration Rover project is much larger than 1997's Mars Pathfinder and scientists hope to gather more information than ever before about the Red Planet.

The first rover to land on the planet's surface will be Spirit, which will land on Jan. 3 near the center of the Gusev Crater, a place where NASA scientists believe there may have once been a giant lake. Then, three weeks later Opportunity will touch down at the Meridiani Planum, a region that contains huge deposits of exposed mineral that could have been formed under watery conditions.

Landing, however, is only the first step in the three-month Mars exploration project. It will take a week for each rover to unfold itself, rise to its full height and begin scanning its surroundings. Using images and measurements that they will receive daily from the rovers, scientists will command the vehicles to travel to rocks and soil targets of interest to evaluate their composition and texture on microscopic scales.

During their 12 weeks of activity each rover is expected to traverse an area the size of 10 soccer pitches.