Curiosity Rover Marks 9 Years on Mars With New Panorama

Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Curiosity Mars Rover has sent home a new high-definition panorama depicting its current view from within the Red Planet’s Gale Crater to mark nine years of successful exploration.

Curiosity’s younger sibling, the Perseverance Mars Rover, has hogged much of the limelight since landing at Jezero Crater in February.

But Curiosity has been tirelessly taking photos, pulverizing rocks and analyzing the chemical makeup of Mars since it touched down on Aug. 5, 2012, JPL said in a written statement. 

“Landing day is still one of the happiest days of my professional career,” according to Curiosity Mission Project Manager Megan Richardson Lin of JPL. “We’re driving a robot as it explores another planet. Seeing how new discoveries and scientific results guide each day’s activities is extremely rewarding.”

The new images were taken in July as Curiosity was making its way up the 5-mile-tall Mount Sharp, within Gale Crater.

The rover’s current location is “particularly exciting,” according to the JPL statement. 

“Spacecraft orbiting Mars show that Curiosity is now somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by salty minerals called sulfates,” the statement said. “The mountain’s layers in this area may reveal how the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up over time. Similar changes are seen across the planet, and studying this region up close has been a major long-term goal for the mission.”

The contents of Martian rocks and dust may contain answers about the planet’s history, Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Freeman explained.

“The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened,” she said.

More information on the Curiosity Mars Rover is available online at jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-rover-msl.