3000 Days of NASA’s Curiosity Rover on the Mars
Curiosity, NASA’s Mars rover, has recently completed 3,000 Martian days or sols on the planet Mars. In order to celebrate this moment, the Curiosity team released a panorama captured by the rover on 18th November 2020.
Key Points
- Curiosity rover has completed 3,000 Mars days on Mars just 5 weeks before NASA’s Perseverance rover is scheduled to touch down the planet.
- The panorama released by the Curiosity team is a combination of 122 images showing rock “benches” on the slopes of Mount Sharp, which the rover has been climbing since September 2014.
- The science team of Curiosity is excited to understand out how rock benches are formed and what they mean for the ancient environment within Gale.
- “Gale” i.e. Gale Crater is a 96-mile-wide hole in the ground that the rover has been exploring since 2012. As per the observations of the rover, Gale has hosted a lake-and-stream system in the ancient past.
- Mount Sharp rises around 5.5 km (3.4 miles) into the Martian sky from Gale’s center.
- Curiosity has been picking its way through the massif’s foothills for over 6 years now, looking for clues about the Mar’s transition to the cold desert from a relatively warm and wet world.
Perseverance Rover
Perseverance will be landing on Mars on February 18, 2021, inside Jezero Crater. Jezero crater is around 2,300 miles from Gale.
Curiosity
Curiosity Rover landed on the red planet Mars on 6th August 2012. The rover is around 10 feet long, 7 feet tall, and 9 feet wide. The aim of the mission was to find present or past conditions on Mars favorable for life.