MOSCOW, August 4 (RIA Novosti) - NASA’s Curiosity rover is to celebrate its first anniversary on Mars next week.
Curiosity landed safely in the Gale Crater in August 2012 for a two-year mission to determine whether life exists or has existed on the Red Planet, and to study the climate and geology in order to prepare for future human exploration.
The rover, equipped with tools for conducting detailed geological, geochemical, atmospheric and climatic research, including the detection of possible traces of water and organic compounds, has already achieved its key science goal of revealing life could have existed on Mars long ago.
The mobile lab is also guiding designs for future space missions, the US space agency reported on its website this week.
“That dramatic touchdown a year ago and the science findings since then advance us toward further exploration, including sending humans to an asteroid and Mars,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden was quoted as saying by NASA on Friday.
Curiosity has provided over 190 gigabits of data since its successful landing on Mars on August 5, 2012, PDT. It has also returned more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images and fired over 75,000 laser shots to find out the composition of targets.
In addition, the rover, which has driven more than 1 mile, has taken and studied samples from two rocks.
In June, the US space agency said it has compiled a 1.3-billion-pixel view of the surface of Mars based on some 900 photos taken by Curiosity. The panorama is available on NASA’s website.
A movie made with Hazard-Avoidance Camera images from Curiosity's first year, titled "Twelve Months in Two Minutes," is available here.
