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Will NASA's Curiosity find life on Mars? Well, the brand-new rover is set to launch on Saturday. 

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It will be the biggest, most expensive and most sophisticated rover ever to hit the Red Planet. 

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And John Zarrella joins us from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with all the details. Hello, John.

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Hey, Anna, I'm inside NASA's vehicle assembly building, which is the fourth-largest building in the world. 

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You can see the enormity of it. 

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And the VAB is where the Apollo moon rockets were stacked and where the space shuttle orbiters were stacked to the external tank and the solid rocket booster.

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In fact, take a look over here, little bit of a treat for the viewers. 

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That's the space shuttle Endeavor. It's sitting here until the museum in California is ready to accept it.

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So, you know, with the space shuttle program now over, NASA is turning its attention to deep-space exploration. 

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And as you mentioned, they're getting ready -- in fact, tomorrow morning -- to launch the largest rover they've ever sent to Mars.

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Mars: does life exist there? Did it ever? 

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NASA is poised to take its boldest step towards answering questions that could change forever our view of humanity's place in the universe.

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I think the best way of saying why we're so excited about this mission is that 

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it sets us up for the future of finally answering that, you know, really age-old question of 

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"Does life exist on other planets?"

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The mission is called the Mars Science Laboratory or MSL. 

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The most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to Mars, it has the capability to detect signs of life. 

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If it works, come next August, after traveling 350 million miles, 

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a 2,000-pound six-wheel rover called Curiosity will arrive at the Red Planet.

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Using a tether system never tried before, it will be lowered down to a place called the Gale Crater. 

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The size of a small car, Curiosity is the Cadillac of rovers.

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We're choosing to make the rovers bigger and bigger because we want to cover more ground. 

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We want to be able to put an arm out and drill a rock.

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Drill a rock? Why?

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On Mars, if you... if life exists as single-cell organisms or it ever existed, we believe it will be under the ground or inside rocks.

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Inside Gale Crater sits what scientists believe is a layered mountain, in essence, the history of Mars told in the layers. 

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And if water ever flowed on Mars, it might have been in that crater. 

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Curiosity's arm will collect samples and place them in its onboard laboratory with the ability to detect organic material.

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Now, if we discover organic materials on Mars, that... then it gets very exciting. 

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And, you know, the chances of it may be low, but the payoff is huge. Organic materials are required for life as we know it.

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But it won't mean life exists, just the building blocks.

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It's... if you go to a the driest desert on Earth, can you find life on your samples if you do a robotic study? 

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Probably not. It's actually quite difficult. Life has to stick up and make itself seen.

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Finding life itself would be left to the next wave of explorers, robotic and perhaps even human.