NASA’s Curiosity Rover celebrates 3,000 days on Mars

Curiosity, the rover that explores the planet Mars since it landed on the red planet on On August 6, 2012, just celebrated its 3000th day on Mars on January 12, 2021.

It is important to note that these are Martian days we’re talking about called soils and last 24 hours and 40 minutes. The Mars Exploration Rover spent this time admirably navigating and investigating the Martian climate and geology, in part to determine if Mars is habitable, or if it ever was in the past.. In December 2012, Curiosity’s mission was extended indefinitely, so we’ll likely be removing a few more floors from this bad boy before he finally retires.

In his time on Mars, Curiosity traveled 14.87 miles and provided detailed images for you to explore on NASA. website. It also has a ton of technology on board that has potential outside of space travel. the The Chemistry and Mineralogy Instrument, or CheMin, for example, is designed to perform chemical analysis of powdered rock to determine the types and amounts of minerals present. But it also serves a purpose at the Getty Conservation Institute: it can date and assess works of art without causing physical harm to them.

Soon, Curiosity will be joined by the Perseverance rover, which launched fin Cape Canaveral, Fla. on July 30, 2020 and is expected to land on Mars in about five weeks on February 18. Again, the purpose of this mission is to assess the makeup of Mars to determine if it can be habitable. About 85% of the new rover is based on legacy hardware, as previous rovers have been so successful. The big change here is that Perseverance will have more and better quality cameras to provide more detailed images. It is also designed to bring rock samples back to Earth.