What Has Curiosity Learned About Mars In 10 Years Since Landing?

Space.com

NASA highlights some of the discoveries it has made on the Red Planet.  Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Transcript

00:00The Curiosity rover set out to answer a big question.

00:04Could Mars have supported ancient life?

00:07Now we know the answer, but there's still so much more to learn.

00:16To help NASA's Curiosity rover safely explore the surface of Mars,

00:20engineers here on Earth use a nearly identical sibling named Maggie.

00:26This full-scale engineering model helps the team practice operations

00:30in the Mars yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

00:34I'm Raquel Villanueva, here with Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Freeman.

00:40Her team is celebrating their 10th year on the Red Planet.

00:44Where has the rover traveled to in the past decade?

00:47Well, we've spent the last basically 10 years Martian mountain climbing.

00:52Curiosity landed at the base of a big mountain named Mount Sharp

00:57that is made of layers of rocks.

00:59So we're climbing the mountain to give us a snapshot of Martian history.

01:03We've driven about 17.5 miles,

01:06and more impressively, we've climbed over 2,000 feet in elevation up the mountain.

01:12We're all the way up in these hills now. It's pretty spectacular.

01:16With all that climbing, how is Curiosity doing?

01:19Pretty good, actually.

01:21All of our science instruments are working just about as good as they did when we landed.

01:25We have nearly our full capabilities.

01:28The arm and the drill and the rover, they're a little bit arthritic,

01:31so we have to be a little bit gentle when we use them.

01:34And our wheels are a little bit beat up.

01:36The wheels on Maggie look great, but we have some test wheels that we've really destroyed.

01:41The wheels on the rover are somewhere between these two.

01:44We just drilled our 35th sample the other week, so still doing amazing science.

01:50And how do you decide where the rover is going to go?

01:52Do you work with other NASA missions?

01:54You know, the data from the Mars orbiters have been really helpful.

01:58The spectrometers, that's the kind of instrument on Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,

02:02have told us where the interesting minerals are

02:05and where the best places to go to look at changing environments are.

02:09And then, in particular, the cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,

02:13they're so good, and they're so helpful at allowing us to find

02:17the safest way that we can climb this mountain.

02:20What would you say is the biggest discovery your team has made?

02:24You know, Curiosity was sent to Mars in order to answer a really big question.

02:28Did Mars have all of the ingredients that we know life needed?

02:32And 10 years later, not only have we given that answer a definitive yes,

02:37but we've also seen that those ingredients were around for tens of millions of years.

02:43And what's next for Curiosity?

02:45We can see from orbit that we're getting to a place in the mountain

02:48that likely records a pretty dramatic change in the sorts of environments that we're around.

02:53You know, the lakes that once filled Gale started to dry out,

02:57and we're getting to that period in time.

02:59So we're really interested in answering,

03:02how long do these habitable environments persist

03:05as Mars and Gale crater went through these pretty big climate changes?

03:10I just can't wait to see what's next.

03:12We've seen hints that the rocks are going to be very different very soon,

03:16and so I'm really curious what we're going to find.

03:19Well, that is an exciting new chapter for you, and congratulations on 10 years.

03:23Thanks, Abigail.

03:24Thanks so much.

03:26To get the latest updates, follow at NASA JPL and at NASA Mars on social media,

03:32or take a deeper dive on the mission websites at mars.nasa.gov.

03:37NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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