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On August 6 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars and kicked off a brand new period of Martian exploration. It was NASA’s fourth rover mission to Mars over the previous 20 years; earlier missions efficiently landed the Sojurner, Spirit, and Alternative rovers. Curiosity represented a much more troublesome endeavor than its predecessors. The rover was so massive, NASA needed to invent a brand new sort of rocket-braking sky crane to deploy the lander; the Martian environment was too skinny to efficiently aerobrake a car of Curiosity’s mass.
Within the 5 years since, Curiosity has contributed vital knowledge to our understanding of Martian climate, geology, geohistory, and the presence of water on its floor at varied factors in its historical historical past. Due to Curiosity’s well-chosen touchdown web site at Gale Crater, we now know that liquid water flowed over that space, and that the sediment deposits Curiosity has discovered because it climbed upward present that the pH and salt content material of the water modified over time, because the crater stuffed, dried, and stuffed once more.
Mineral deposits discovered to-date on Mars echo such findings on Earth and have supplied further hints concerning the planet’s distant previous. To rejoice the rover’s work, NASA has launched a point-of-view video showcasing 5 years of the rover’s planetary exploration.
The video is taken from Curiosity’s left-front hazard avoidance digital camera, and there’s a contextual map of the rover’s location on the Martian floor within the right-hand nook. Although it takes a bit to play out and these photos aren’t as polished because the photographs NASA typically makes use of for PR, they nonetheless showcase progressively shifting terrain and environments over the 5 years Curiosity has been in operation.
We’ve additionally included a slideshow of Curiosity’s actions on Mars between its 2012 touchdown and the current day, together with a “selfie” that was stitched collectively from 57 photographs. (No, Curiosity can’t take snapshots of itself, a lot much less connect them to a Tweet with a horrible Instagram-style filter.)
Curiosity has endured some battering from the Martian climate and unforgiving terrain. Its wheels have been carrying out and there’s an intermittent brief in its drill arm. Preliminary fears that the rover may be left unable to drive final December have confirmed unfounded, although the drill hasn’t been utilized in 2017 and could also be clogged with particles. Regardless of these points, Curiosity is anticipated to stay in operation by the indefinite future, and its experiences have knowledgeable NASA’s design of its Mars 2020 rover. Finest of all, it nonetheless has a associate on the Martian floor: The indefatigable Alternativeremains to be going robust, four,943 days after touchdown.







