NASA announced early Thursday morning that the Mars rover Curiosity has reached the base of Mount Sharp. This has been a long-term science destination toward which the rover has been heading for the last two years.

Officials of NASA say fundamental scientific drilling could be initiated as early as next week at an accumulation of rocks at the foothills of the mid-Mars destination point.

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The space agency states that there were speculations as to whether or not the rover would endure the environment and terrain of the desolate planet, and actually reach its destination without major complications.

Mount Sharp is located in ancient Gale Crater and rises nearly 3 ½ miles high.

A recent scientific evaluation group has disparaged the Curiosity team for an "overly extended mission that involves too much driving and too little sampling." The rover itself set out on the long trek well over a year ago.

Project scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology strongly states, "We are going to do more, highly necessary scientific drilling," despite the negative view of the scientific panel.

Grotzinger explains that since the rover has finally reached a key location in the scientific explorations, it would be utterly pointless to turn back now.

According to NASA, the nuclear-powered Curiosity remains in a healthy operable state, other than some normal wear on the rover's wheels.

Curiosity is equipped with very high-tech rock-drilling capability, as well as, instruments the forecast the whether and track radiation patterns - NASA expects to continue to utilize the rover to collect this vital Mars data, which in turn will broad our understanding of the 'red planet.'

This particular mission is the most expensive Mars expedition, totaling an ever-growing $2.5 billion.

Some scientists say that stopping this mission now would essentially be throwing all of that money in to space, so to speak.

TagsNASA, Mars, rover, Curiosity Rover, Mars Expedition, Space, space exploration, mount sharp mars