Curiosity, the rover that has been exploring the planet Mars since landing on the Red Planet August 6, 2012 just celebrated its 3,000th day on Mars on January 12, 2021.
It is important to note that it is Mars- days we’re talking about, known as sols and last 24 hours and 40 minutes. The Mars Exploration Rover drove admirably around that time, examining the climate and geology of Mars, in part to determine if Mars is habitable or if it was ever in the past.. In December 2012, Curiosity’s mission was extended indefinitely, so we’ll likely get quite a few more sols out of this bad boy before he finally retires.
In its time on Mars, Curiosity has traveled 23.87 miles, providing detailed imagery for you to explore on NASA’s website. It also features a ton of onboard technologies that have potential beyond space travel. The Chemical and Mineralogical Instrument, or CheMin, for example, is designed to perform a chemical analysis of powdery 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 evaluate works of art without harming them physically.
Curiosity will soon be joined by the Persistence robber, who from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30, 2020 and is expected to land on Mars in about five weeks, on February 18. Again, the purpose of that mission is to evaluate the composition of Mars to determine if it could be habitable. About 85 percent of the new rover is based on traditional hardware, as previous rovers were so successful. The big change here is that Perseverance will have more higher quality cameras to deliver more detailed images. It is also designed to take rock samples back to Earth.