Curiosity Rover In 7th Year On Mars, Still Going Strong

It was a crazy idea on the face of it—sending a $2.5 billion robot to another planet with a complex rocket-sled contraption to get it safely to the surface.

- Ryan Whitwam

It worked, though, and Curiosity began its exploration of the red planet six years ago. As the rover begins its seventh year on Mars, let’s look at how it got there and where it’s going.

Curiosity is simply the payload of a mission known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which had been in the planning phase since 2004. This spacecraft contained the rover and its landing apparatus, which was responsible for the most accurate landing Martian landing of any known object. MSL launched from Earth on November 26, 2011, and the landing took place on August 6, 2012.