Where the most advanced lab on Mars is still driving today.
This is Bradbury Landing, the exact spot on the floor of Gale Crater where NASA's Curiosity rover was lowered by rocket-powered sky crane on August 6, 2012. Nuclear-powered and car-sized, Curiosity is still active more than a decade later, climbing the slopes of Mount Sharp.
Claim your plot here →Curiosity survived the famous "seven minutes of terror" — a heat shield, supersonic parachute, and a hovering sky crane that winched the one-ton rover to the surface. NASA named the touchdown point Bradbury Landing in honor of author Ray Bradbury, and confirmed within months that Gale Crater once held a long-lived freshwater lake capable of supporting microbial life.
Powered by a plutonium battery rather than solar panels, Curiosity keeps working through dust storms and winter. It has detected organic molecules and seasonal swings of methane in the air, and continues to drill its way up Mount Sharp, reading billions of years of Martian history layer by layer.