LOS ANGELES, Aug. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- A new spacecraft designed to search water on Mars was launched Friday by an Atlas rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, the US space agency NASA said.

The two-ton spacecraft, named Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is scheduled to arrive at Mars in March 2006 for a mission to understand the planet's water riddles and advance the exploration of the mysterious red planet, said the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.