NASA’s Curiosity Rover

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Latest News

Recently, NASA’s Curiosity Rover has discovered carbon-bearing minerals on Mars, marking the first solid evidence of a carbon cycle on the Red Planet.

About NASA’s Curiosity Rover

• Curiosity is a U.S. robotic rover launched on November 26, 2011, aboard an Atlas V rocket and landed on Mars on August 5, 2012.
• It is part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission and was the first to use a sky crane landing system to reach the Martian surface.
• The rover runs on a thermoelectric power generator, which utilises the radioactive decay of plutonium instead of solar panels.
• Its four primary scientific goals are:
  • Determine whether life ever existed on Mars.
  • Characterise Mars' past and present climate.
  • Understand the geology of Mars.
  • Prepare for future human exploration.
• The rover is approximately 3 meters long, weighs around 900 kilograms, and is equipped with an onboard chemistry lab for analysing rock samples.

 Key Findings from the Rover

• The discovery was made during the rover’s exploration of an 89-meter stretch of terrain in an ancient lakebed in the Gale Crater, where it drilled into different types of rocks.
• The Curiosity rover identified a carbonate mineral called siderite, which contains carbon and oxygen, in the sulfate-rich layers of Martian rocks. This is the first time this mineral has been found on Mars.
• The rocks containing 5–10% siderite by weight suggest that a significant portion of Mars’ past CO₂ may be trapped in the planet's crust, rather than having escaped into space.
• The rocks also showed the presence of iron oxyhydroxides, indicating that siderite may have dissolved in acidic water, releasing some CO₂ back into the atmosphere. This points to a limited and slow carbon cycle.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover FAQs

Q1. What is NASA's Curiosity Rover?
Ans. NASA's Curiosity Rover is a robotic explorer launched to Mars in 2011 as part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission to study the planet’s climate and geology.

Q2. What are the primary objectives of Curiosity?
Ans. Curiosity’s main goal is to determine if Mars ever had conditions suitable for microbial life and to analyse soil, rocks, and the Martian atmosphere.

Q3. Which landing site was chosen for Curiosity on Mars?
Ans. Curiosity successfully landed in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, an area believed to have once contained water.

Source: SCN