An Atlas V 541 rocket launched just after 10h00 on November 26, 2011 from the Florida headland of Cape Canaveral. Its destination: Mars, the same red planet that forms the backdrop to the $250 million Disney flick John Carter. More than a century ago, Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined 12-foottall, four-armed barbarians, raw energy fields, wormholes, dual lives on different worlds and many other themes, which are rumoured to have filtered down into yet more famous science fiction, including  Star Wars, Star Trek, The Matrix and Avatar. But the central premise of Burroughs’ yarn (which spawned a series of ten novels), and indeed all science fiction, is this: is there life elsewhere in the universe? Burroughs found a practical roost for these fantasies on Mars, a planet that a modern rocket ship can reach in seven to eight months.

Now, NASA’s ambitious car-sized Curiosity Rover has been sent to ponder just how different Mars is from the landscapes of Utah, where John Carter was filmed. Curiosity is not only the biggest robot sent to explore a neighbouring planet, but also the best equipped. Curiosity’s primary mission objective is to find out whether Mars does (or did) support forms of life.