Mission managers said Monday the one-ton rover named Curiosity looks healthy. It is headed for a crater near the Martian equator on a two-year mission to study whether the environment could have been suitable for primitive life.

The mission has been nagged by an issue with the rover s drill that will bore into Martian rocks. Before launch, tests showed that when handled a certain way, the drill produced a contaminant that could leak into samples gathered. A team has been studying ways to get around the problem.

Project manager Pete Theisinger says he s confident Curiosity will still achieve all its goals.