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Curiosity Spent 2000 Days on Mars

World | March 26, 2018, Monday // 16:28

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Bulgaria: Curiosity Spent 2000 Days on Mars

NASA

Nasa's Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is celebrating 2,000 martian days (sols) investigating Gale Crater on the Red Planet. In that time, the robot has made some remarkable observations.

Curiosity, NASA's fourth rover, landed on the surface of Mars in crater Gail on August 6, 2012. The sophisticated landing procedure was named by scientists and journalists as "the seven minutes of horror".

Curiosity succeeded in stretching the main tasks assigned to its mission, discovering traces of the existence of warm freshwater lakes and rivers on Mars, and made many other discoveries. Despite all the technical problems, NASA's fourth rover, as well as his older Opportunity brother, have been working on the surface of Mars for much longer than the scientists originally relied on - 2000 Martian days instead of 668 days. During this time, the machine took 18.7 kilometers and climbed almost to the top of Mount Sharp, whose slopes are currently being studied.

According to the Curiosity engineering team's estimates, plutonium heat and power generators will work for about 7-8 years, which will allow him to wait for the NASA next rover - the Mars 2020.

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