One year ago today, the Curiosity probe first landed on Mars, after launching in November of 2011 for an eight month journey. The Curiosity probe left Earth armed to the teeth with scientific instruments, several cameras, a laser, and a sassy sense of humor courtesy of a NASA social media team.
The problem landed after what was dubbed “seven minutes of terror” where the probe had to undergo a series of automated maneuvers. There was no room for error during the landing, because it takes radio signals 14 minutes to make a round trip from Earth to Mars. No course corrections from NASA were possible. But land it did, and in the year since it’s already taught NASA scientists a lot about the Red Planet. Those findings will help us learn more about our cosmic neighbor, and will hopefully pave the way to human exploration.
As NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement, ”Wheel tracks now, will lead to boot prints later.”
There are definitely a lot of wheel tracks. Curiosity has traveled over one mile since landing on Mars, and is currently making its way towards Mount Sharp. All the while, it’s using it’s scientific instruments to learn everything it can about the Red Planet. You can see a map of its path so far below.
Curiosity‘s primary mission was to answer a simple question: was there ever a time in its history when Mars may have been able to support life? In the past year, it’s already arrived at its answer: Yes.
That was confirmed earlier this year, when an analysis of Marian rock revealed the chemistry necessary to support life. As scientist John Grotzinger put it at a NASA press conference in March, “We have found a habitable environment that is so benign for life that if there were water, you’d have been able to drink it.”
That bolstered findings in December of last year that the Martian soil is home to traces of carbon – meaning that the chemical building blocks of life were around on the Ancient Martian surface.
In addition to drilling soil samples, Curiosity also sniffed around – literally – by taking samples of the Martian atmosphere in November of last year. Those findings told NASA scientists two things: first, that there probably isn’t any life on Mars today, indicated by low concentrations of methane. Second and more important, though, it found that the Martian atmosphere was once thicker than it is today, meaning that the atmospheric conditions may have been more suitable for life.
But there was more to Curiosity‘s findings than just chemistry. In May of this year, NASA confirmed that Curiosity had discovered the remains of an ancient streambed. That finding showed that not only was there once water within the soil of Mars, but that it flowed freely on the surface. That added to similar findings of Curiosity‘s sister rover, Opportunity, which in December 2011 found evidence of mineral deposits that could only have been made by flowing water.
Between the atmospheric findings, soil samples, and evidence of ancient streambeds, Curiosity has made a pretty clear case that billions of years ago, the conditions on Mars were right for life. Whether life existed or not, though, has yet to be determined.
“We now know Mars offered favorable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago,” said Grotzinger in a recent statement. “It has been gratifying to succeed, but that has also whetted our appetites to learn more.”
And Curiosity is on its way to Mount Sharp to learn more right now. Hopefully it will continue to give scientists more and more information for years – possibly even decades – to come.
To celebrate one year on Mars, the Curiosity team has created this video: