Curiosity

Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is a rover exploring the surface of Mars for evidence of conditions that may have been favorable to microbial life billions of years ago. Leading up to the landing of Curiosity, a video called “Seven Minutes of Terror” was widely circulated, detailing the new sky crane technology that was being used to land the car-sized rover safely on the surface of Mars. The rover landed successfully with much fanfare surrounding the livestreaming of NASA’s mission control. Curiosity carries a large set of scientific instruments and is able to drill into rocks and scoop up soil samples to analyze their structure and chemical composition. The rover is the first space probe to collect samples from rocks drilled on Mars. Early in its mission, Curiosity drilled a rock and determined that the drilled material was 4.2 billion years old, but had only been exposed on the surface for 80 million years.