NASA launched the Curiosity rover toward Mars
On this day · 26 November 2011
On November 26, 2011, an Atlas V rocket carried NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover off Earth on a months-long voyage to Gale Crater.
On November 26, 2011, an Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:02 a.m. EST, carrying NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory and its centerpiece: a nuclear-powered, car-sized rover named Curiosity.
The machine weighed about 1 ton, roughly the size of a small SUV, and bristled with cameras, a laser that could zap rock from a distance, and an onboard chemistry lab. Its job was to read the geology of Mars for signs that the planet had once been habitable.
The cruise took more than eight months. On August 5–6, 2012, Curiosity survived the now-famous “seven minutes of terror”—a sky-crane descent that lowered it on cables—to touch down inside Gale Crater.
It has been roving, drilling, and climbing Mount Sharp ever since.
What began as a single launch became one of the longest-running field expeditions ever conducted on another world.
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