The three-mile-tall Mount Sharp is an inviting target for investigation by NASA's one-ton Mars rover, which is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet on Aug. 5.

The towering mountain that NASA's next Mars rover will explore after landing on the Red Planet next month remains mysterious to scientists, who say there's nothing quite like it here on Earth.

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Mount Sharp rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the center of Mars' huge Gale Crater, where the car-sizeCuriosity roverwill touch down on the night of Aug. 5. Curiosity scientists are eager to study the mountain, whose many layers preserve a record of the Red Planet's changing environmental conditions going back perhaps a billion years or more.

Curiosity's rovings could also help the team understand howMount Sharpformed, because they're not entirely sure.

"In one go, you have flat-lying strata that are 5 kilometers thick. There's nothing like that on Earth," said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena. "We don't really know what's going on there." [Curiosity - The SUV of Mars Rovers]

The 1-ton Curiosity rover is the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, which launched in late November. MSL's main goal is to determine if theGale Craterarea is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.

To get at this question, Curiosity will investigate the different layers of Mount Sharp, which is taller than any peak in the continental United States.

Life as we know it depends on liquid water. So the rover will probably spend a lot of time poking around Mount Sharp's lower reaches, whereMars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs of minerals that form in the presence of water, such as clays and sulfates.

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NASA's Curiosity rover to explore bizarre Martian mountain