The Mars Curiosity Rover on Friday celebrated its 10th birthday. The little SUV, all alone on Mars, has been working hard for the last decade. It’s been plodding around the Red Planet, trying to find proof that billions of years ago, Mars had the conditions needed to support microscopic life.
The Mars Curiosity Rover has driven nearly 29 kilometres and ascended 625 metres as it explores Gale Crater and the foothills of Mount Sharp within it. The rover, NASA said, has analysed 41 rock and soil samples, relying on a number of science instruments to learn what they reveal about the mostly unknown planet.
The little SUV has studied Mars’ skies, capturing images of shining clouds, drifting moons, measured high-energy radiation and found proof that liquid water (as well as the chemical building blocks and nutrients needed for supporting life) were present for at least tens of millions of years in Gale Crater. The rover has acquired 494,540 images, returned 3,102 gigabytes of data to Earth, drilled 35 samples and scooped 6.
Here’s a look at some imagery captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover. All images, and captions, are provided by NASA.
1. A non-doorway doorway
Who can forget this: a seemingly rectangular and shadowy opening in the planet’s exposed rock that looks as if it leads into the Martian underground. This image was taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) and was mistaken for a doorway.
2. Martian lakebed
This evenly layered rock photographed by the Mastcam on NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit not far from where flowing water entered a lake.
3. Paraitepuy Pass
This scene was captured by the Mars Curiosity Rover on September 9, 2015. The rover was many kilometres from its current location. The circle indicates the location of a Curiosity-size boulder that the rover recently drove past. To the left of that is “Paraitepuy Pass,” which Curiosity is now travelling through.
4. The Avanavero drill site
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam to take this 360-degree panorama of at the “Avanavero” drill site. The panorama is made up of 127 individual images taken on June 20, 2022, and stitched together back on Earth. The colour has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth.
5. SAM Instrument selfie
This selfie of the Mars Curiosity Rover with inset showing the SAM instrument prior to installation on the rover. In this image, the rover is in front of Mount Mercou, a 6-metre tall outcrop, and next to the “Nontron” sampling site. This area is in the transition region between the “clay-bearing unit” that the rover has finished exploring and the “sulfate-bearing unit” that the rover is now exploring.
6. Panorama near Sierra Maigualida
The Mars Curiosity Rover captured this 360-degree panorama near a location nicknamed “Sierra Maigualida” on May 22, 2022. The panorama is made up of 133 individual images captured by the Mastcam. Both the floor of Gale Crater and upper Mount Sharp are seen through a dusty atmospheric haze. Scientists interpret the curving and overlapping layers in the bedrock around the rover as evidence of cross-bedding, which occurs when layers are deposited from windblown sediment.
7. Flaky, streambed rocks
This view of layered, flaky rocks that are believed to have formed in an ancient streambed or small pond was captured via Mastcam on June 2, 2022. There are six images that make up this mosaic.
8. Martian flower
Smaller than a penny, the flower-like rock artifact on the left was imaged by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of its robotic arm. The image was taken on Feb. 24, 2022. NASA said the “flower,” along with the spherical rock artifacts seen to the right, were made in the ancient past when minerals carried by water cemented the rock.
9. Postcard from Mars
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day. Blue, orange, and green colour was added to a combination of both panoramas for an artistic interpretation of the scene. This pic is from November 16, 2021.
10. The Mars Curiosity Rover’s first pic
This full-resolution colour image from NASA’s Curiosity Rover shows the gravel-covered surface of Mars. It was taken by the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) several minutes after Curiosity touched down on Mars. Curiosity took a good look around and decided that life was good on Mars — albeit a bit lonely. NASA published this pic on August 8, 2012.
Happy Birthday, Mars Curiosity Rover.