About Curiosity
As it is well known, Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL). It landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012. Its goals were and still are to test the environmental conditions, including investigation of the role of water and planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration.
As from the science perspective, Curiosity is a laboratory on wheels. To me, most interesting and impressive is that Curiosity can vaporize a small portion of a rock with an infrared laser and examine the resulting spectra signature to query the rock's elemental composition. Curiosity is absolutely packed with instrumentation.
In 2013, the mission found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment that offered all the basic chemical ingredients for microbial life. Since reaching Mount Sharp in 2014, Curiosity has examined environments where both water and wind have left their marks. Having studied more than 600 vertical feet of rock with signs of lakes and groundwater, Curiosity's international science team concluded that habitable conditions lasted for at least millions of years.
At the start of 2018, Curiosity celebrated its 2000th Sol (Mars day).
Sandstorm at the crater Gale
Figures 1 and 2, and 3 and 4, show the same parts of the crater and crater walls of Gale, where Curiosity is located. Figures 1 and 3 are recorded in the 2077th Sol (2077th Martian day for Curiosity), and Figures 2 and 4 in the 2085th Sol, ie in a space of eight days. In the case of Figure 2, the crater wall, seen in the normal circumstances as beautiful as a massive mountain ridge, is completely invisible! The last picture was recorded in the 2076th Sol, just one day before the first one, showing the same detail.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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