What Has Curiosity Learned About Mars In 10 Years Since Landing?
NASA highlights some of the discoveries it has made on the Red Planet.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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00:00 The Curiosity rover set out to answer a big question.
00:04 Could Mars have supported ancient life?
00:07 Now we know the answer, but there's still so much more to learn.
00:11 [ music ]
00:16 To help NASA's Curiosity rover safely explore the surface of Mars,
00:20 engineers here on Earth use a nearly identical sibling named Maggie.
00:26 This full-scale engineering model helps the team practice operations
00:30 in the Mars yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
00:34 I'm Raquel Villanueva, here with Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Freeman.
00:40 Her team is celebrating their 10th year on the Red Planet.
00:44 Where has the rover traveled to in the past decade?
00:47 Well, we've spent the last basically 10 years Martian mountain climbing.
00:52 Curiosity landed at the base of a big mountain named Mount Sharp
00:57 that is made of layers of rocks.
00:59 So we're climbing the mountain to give us a snapshot of Martian history.
01:03 We've driven about 17.5 miles,
01:06 and more impressively, we've climbed over 2,000 feet in elevation up the mountain.
01:12 We're all the way up in these hills now. It's pretty spectacular.
01:16 With all that climbing, how is Curiosity doing?
01:19 Pretty good, actually.
01:21 All of our science instruments are working just about as good as they did when we landed.
01:25 We have nearly our full capabilities.
01:28 The arm and the drill and the rover, they're a little bit arthritic,
01:31 so we have to be a little bit gentle when we use them.
01:34 And our wheels are a little bit beat up.
01:36 The wheels on Maggie look great, but we have some test wheels that we've really destroyed.
01:41 The wheels on the rover are somewhere between these two.
01:44 We just drilled our 35th sample the other week, so still doing amazing science.
01:50 And how do you decide where the rover is going to go?
01:52 Do you work with other NASA missions?
01:54 You know, the data from the Mars orbiters have been really helpful.
01:58 The spectrometers, that's the kind of instrument on Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,
02:03 have told us where the interesting minerals are
02:06 and where the best places to go to look at changing environments are.
02:09 And then in particular, the cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,
02:13 they're so good, and they're so helpful at allowing us to find
02:17 the safest way that we can climb this mountain.
02:20 What would you say is the biggest discovery your team has made?
02:24 You know, Curiosity was sent to Mars in order to answer a really big question.
02:28 Did Mars have all of the ingredients that we know life needed?
02:32 And 10 years later, not only have we given that answer a definitive yes,
02:37 but we've also seen that those ingredients were around for tens of millions of years.
02:43 And what's next for Curiosity?
02:45 We can see from orbit that we're getting to a place in the mountain
02:48 that likely records a pretty dramatic change in the sorts of environments that we're around.
02:53 You know, the lakes that once filled Gale started to dry out,
02:57 and we're getting to that period in time.
02:59 So we're really interested in answering,
03:02 how long do these habitable environments persist
03:05 as Mars and Gale crater went through these pretty big climate changes?
03:10 I just can't wait to see what's next.
03:12 We've seen hints that the rocks are going to be very different very soon,
03:16 and so I'm really curious what we're going to find.
03:19 Well, that is an exciting new chapter for you, and congratulations on 10 years.
03:23 Thanks, Abigail.
03:24 Thanks so much.
03:26 To get the latest updates, follow @NASAJPL and @NASAMars on social media,
03:32 or take a deeper dive on the mission websites at mars.nasa.gov.
03:37 (dramatic music)
03:39 (explosion)