Family Portrait
Two NASA engineers pose with three generations of Mars rovers developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA plans on landing another rover on the red planet in 2020.
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4 Years on Mars: Curiosity's Incredible Journey in Pictures
Four years after its harrowing descent through Mars's thin atmosphere, Curiosity celebrates its action-packed journey.
Four Earth-years ago today, NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully touched ground on Mars's dusty surface, after surviving a nail-biting descent through the red planet's thin atmosphere.
Since its triumphant arrival, the car-size "laboratory on wheels" has traveled more than 8.4 miles (13.5 kilometers), taking pictures, collecting samples, and analyzing rocks along the way. Recent software upgrades even let Curiosity autonomously choose which rocks it examines—and shoots with laser beams.
Curiosity has spent more than 1,421 sols, or Martian days, exploring Gale Crater, a low-lying region that may have held past life, if it existed. While the rover has yet to confirm whether Mars once hosted living things, it has found evidence of an ancient freshwater lake in the sediments
