Curiosity traverse in Gale crater

Curiosity · 2012 CE – 2026 CE · Mars

Find out whether Gale crater was ever able to support life, and read its layered mountain.

Historical context

By 2012 the question was no longer whether Mars had water but whether any of that water had been habitable. Curiosity was built as a laboratory on wheels and landed in a crater whose central mountain stacks layer upon layer of sediment. It answered the question at Yellowknife Bay within eight months, and has spent the years since reading the drying of a world. In August 2026, fourteen years after landing, it passed one kilometre of height gained on the mountain.

The voyage, step by step

1. Seven minutes of terror

   6 August 2012

   On 6 August 2012 a rocket-powered crane lowered the rover on nylon cables, cut them and flew off to crash 650 m away.

2. A first scoop of sand

   2012 CE

   At a small drift of dust and sand the rover scooped, sieved and baked its first samples, and rinsed its own handling system clean.

3. Yellowknife Bay

   February 2013

   A grey mudstone drilled in February 2013 yielded clay, sulphur, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen and carbon: the chemistry of a habitable lake.

4. The Kimberley

   2014 CE

   Sandstone beds tilted towards the mountain showed a river delta building out into the ancient lake.

5. The foot of the mountain

   2014 CE

   At Pahrump Hills the rover reached the base of Mount Sharp itself and began the climb it had been sent to make.

6. Murray Buttes

   2016 CE

   The rover threaded between mesas and buttes of wind-carved sandstone, the fossilised dunes of a desert that followed the lake.

7. Vera Rubin ridge

   2018 CE

   On a hard ridge rich in haematite the rover drilled again with a new percussive technique, taught to it after its drill’s feed mechanism failed in December 2016.

8. Gediz Vallis ridge

   2023 CE

   High on the mountain the rover reached a ridge of boulders and gravel dumped by debris flows long after the lake had gone.

Outcome

A habitable freshwater lake proved at Yellowknife Bay, and one kilometre of height gained on Mount Sharp by August 2026.

Curiosity

Nuclear-powered laboratory rover that has been reading the layers of Mount Sharp in Gale crater since August 2012.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Curiosity (rover) — Wikipedia
• A Habitable Fluvio-Lacustrine Environment at Yellowknife Bay, Gale Crater, MarsJohn P. Grotzinger et al. · Science, vol. 343 · 2014
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory — Mars mission pagesNASA / JPL-Caltech

Continue exploring

• Phoenix at the northern plainsPhoenix · 2008 CE
• InSight station in Elysium PlanitiaInSight · 2018 CE – 2022 CE
• Opportunity traverse on Meridiani PlanumOpportunity · 2004 CE – 2018 CE
• Spirit traverse in Gusev craterSpirit · 2004 CE – 2010 CE