Artist’s image of the Curiosity rover on Mars

Mars Rover Curiosity Mission

Mars Rover Curiosity:Mission Stats

Take notes! (p.19 of your notebook)

• Launched Nov. 26, 2011• Arrived Aug. 5, 2012 (36 weeks later)• Duration: 2 years on Mars• Rover weighs almost 1 ton (1,982 lbs)• Distance traveled from Earth to Mars:

– 352 million miles (567 million kilometer)– Remember yesterday? Like standing on a

peppercorn and hitting a pinhead 42′ away

Mars Rover Curiosity:Mission Goals

• Understand the geology• Did it ever have life?• Could it sustain life in the future?

The first high-resolution color mosaic from NASA's Curiosity rover, showing the geological environment around the rover's landing site in Gale Crater.

Mars Rover Curiosity:Images

• Mars Rover Image Gallery• First Curiosity video: 360 degree

view of landing site• So much to see!

– nasa.gov

Layers at the base of Mt. Sharp (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)