Curiosity
A car-sized laboratory exploring an ancient lake bed, and finding iron meteorites on the way.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA (United States)
- Type of mission
- Rover
- Target
- Mars: Gale crater
- Launched
- 26 November 2011
- Status
- Operating
Curiosity was lowered onto the floor of Gale crater by a rocket-powered sky crane on 6 August 2012. Gale is about 154 kilometres wide, with a mountain of layered rock, Mount Sharp, at its centre. Curiosity has been climbing it for more than a decade.
An ancient lake
Its drill and onboard laboratories showed that Gale once held a lake of fresh water, with clay minerals, the right chemical ingredients and a source of energy for microbes. In other words, the crater was once habitable, whether or not anything ever lived there. It has also found carbon-bearing molecules preserved in mudstone and measured changing amounts of methane in the air.
Meteorites in Gale crater
Curiosity has found several iron meteorites. The largest, nicknamed Lebanon, is about 2 metres across, with deep hollows where its surface has been eroded. In 2016 it found a smaller, smooth, egg-shaped one called Egg Rock. Its ChemCam instrument fires a laser at rocks several metres away and reads the light from the spark. On Egg Rock it found iron, nickel and phosphorus, the signature of iron meteorite metal and of the mineral schreibersite.
Why it matters to meteorites
Iron meteorites last a very long time on the dry Martian surface. Comparing their numbers and weathering with meteorites on Earth helps measure how quickly rocks fall onto Mars and how slowly they wear away there.
Key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 26 November 2011 | Curiosity launched on an Atlas V rocket. |
| 6 August 2012 | Landed in Gale crater using a sky crane. |
| 2014 | Imaged the large iron meteorite Lebanon. |
| October 2016 | Found the iron meteorite Egg Rock and analysed it by laser. |
See where this mission fits among all the others in the mission timeline.
Did you know?
Curiosity is about the size of a small car and powered by heat from decaying plutonium.
Its ChemCam laser can analyse a rock from up to about 7 metres away.