Science enthusiasts and space geeks around the world are eagerly awaiting the landing of NASA’s rover Curiosity on Mars, planned for Monday morning at 1:31 am Eastern time. The Mars Science Laboratory, set to replace Opportunity and Spirit, is our most advanced rover yet, and NASA scientists hope that it will help us learn about the Martian climate and geology, collect data for a potential future manned mission and perhaps even find evidence that life could have existed on the the red planet in the past.

“The overarching goal is to assess the potential for past or present habitability on the surface,” says Smithsonian geologist John Grant, who is serving as a participating scientist on the Curiosity team. “Can we find a place on Mars where the conditions may have been habitable, and is the evidence that allows us to determine this actually preserved?”

How about Venus?