U.S. space agency NASA said Thursday its Mars Curiosity rover has reached the base of the Red Planet's Mount Sharp, a 5,000-meter-tall mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater and the rover's long-term prime destination.

"Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world," Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement.

"After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us."

The space agency said Curiosity's trek up the mountain will begin with an examination of the mountain's lower slopes from an entry point near an outcrop called Pahrump Hills, rather than the previously-planned, further entry point known as Murray Buttes.

The decision to head uphill sooner, instead of continuing to Murray Buttes, was based on improved understanding of the region's geography provided by the rover's examinations of several outcrops during the past year, NASA said.

The rover's investigations of two outcrops last month revealed "notable differences from the terrain explored by Curiosity during the past year," it said.

The first outcrop, called Bonanza King, proved too unstable for drilling, but was examined by the rover's instruments and determined to have high silicon content. A second outcrop, examined with the rover's telephoto Mast Camera, revealed a fine- grained, platy surface laced with sulfate-filled veins, the statement said.

NASA said Curiosity will make its way up this week, first into a valley on the lower slopes, where it is expected to drill to acquire a sample for analysis.

"Though this valley has a sandy floor the length of two football fields, the team expects it will be an easier trek than the sandy-floored Hidden Valley, where last month Curiosity's wheels slipped too much for safe crossing," it said.

Curiosity reached its current location earlier than expected because its route was modified earlier this year after NASA found that sharp rocks on the Marian surface was poking holes in four of the rover's six wheels.

"This damage accelerated the rate of wear and tear beyond that for which the rover team had planned. In response, the team altered the rover's route to a milder terrain, bringing the rover farther south, toward the base of Mount Sharp," said the space agency.

Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater in August 2012. During its first year of operations, it fulfilled its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor in an area called Yellowknife Bay yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes, if any existed there. Endite

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