Curiosity

Curiosity, a car-sized rover, has been exploring Mars’s Gale crater and Mount Sharp since its 2012 landing, as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. It launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 26, 2011, and touched down on August 6, 2012, at Aeolis Palus inside Gale crater. The landing site, named Bradbury Landing, sat less than 2.4 kilometers from the target’s center after a 560-million-kilometer journey. Though designed for a two-year primary mission, the rover was granted an indefinite extension in December 2012, and as of September 3, 2026, it had been active for 5,003 sols—over 14 Earth years.

The mission’s core aims include studying Martian climate and geology, determining whether Gale crater ever offered conditions suitable for microbial life (especially regarding water), and gathering data for future human exploration. After about a year, having found evidence that ancient Mars could have supported microbes, the team shifted focus to developing predictive models for how organic compounds and biomolecules are preserved—a field called taphonomy. The region under study has been compared to the Four Corners area of the American West.

The rover’s name came from a national student contest, with over 9,000 entries. Twelve-year-old Clara Ma of Lenexa, Kansas, won for her essay describing curiosity as “an everlasting flame.” Her prize included a trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she signed the rover during assembly.

Curiosity’s life-cycle cost, adjusted for inflation, was US$3.2 billion in 2020. By comparison, the 2021 Perseverance rover cost US$2.9 billion.

The rover measures 2.9 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters high, with a mass of 899 kilograms—80 kilograms of which is scientific instruments. Its main chassis is the Warm Electronics Box. It is the fourth NASA robotic rover sent to Mars since 1996, following Sojourner (1997), Spirit (2004–2010), and Opportunity (2004–2018). At launch, Curiosity made up 23% of the spacecraft’s total 3,893-kilogram mass; the rest was discarded during transport and landing.

Power comes from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), similar to those on the Viking landers. The RTG uses heat from decaying plutonium-238 dioxide—4.8 kilograms supplied by the U.S. Department of Energy—to generate electricity via thermocouples. Waste heat is piped to warm systems, saving electrical power. The unit, called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), was designed by Rocketdyne and Teledyne Energy Systems, and fueled and tested by Idaho National Laboratory.

In 2012, the NASA/JPL MSL/Curiosity team won the Robert J. Collier Trophy for successfully landing the rover and advancing understanding of ancient Martian environments. Curiosity’s design later served as the basis for the Perseverance rover, which carries different instruments.