The descent is expected to reach more than 10 Earth Gs.
It will take a nail-biting “seven minutes of terror” for Curiosity to land, but 14 minutes until Nasa’s more than 100-strong team of scientists will discover the fate of the probe and whether a combined three centuries of human investment has paid off.
“There is a little bit of apprehension but you have to be just a little nervous every time you go to Mars,” Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Programme, said.
“Everyone is confident that they have done everything humanly possible to make sure that this will work. Now it’s a matter of putting it all together.”
Technicians have installed sensors on the heat shield, which is designed to detach as the parachute is deployed, to measure pressure levels and thermal impact during the entry phase.
The heat shield designed for Curiosity’s landing is very similar in size and type to the thermal shield on the Orion deep-space capsule, a craft currently in development which will carry four crew members.
Radiation data will also be collected during the descent to test whether man could tolerate emission fluctuations caused by solar storms from inside a capsule.
“We will learn an enormous amount about what it takes on guided entry visual, what the impacts are on the thermal protection systems and what the atmosphere looks like,” Mr McCuistion said.
“This coupled with the RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) data really pushes us further into the future and the potential to get humans to Mars.”
Experts at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said conditions were “looking good” for the Mars landing on Monday morning, scheduled for impact just after 6.30am.
