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Let's go to Mars

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rover

8 milestones, in chronological order.

  1. 4 July 1997The Rover Decades

    Pathfinder bounces onto Mars and lets Sojourner out

    Airbags took the shock: the lander rebounded twelve metres, bounced at least fifteen more times across Ares Vallis, then opened to release Sojourner, 10.6 kg of rover.

  2. January 2004The Rover Decades

    Spirit and Opportunity find the chemistry of water

    Built for 90 sols apiece, Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity fourteen. Within eight weeks Opportunity had jarosite and hematite spherules: rock soaked in acidic water.

  3. 6 August 2012Follow the Water

    Curiosity survives the seven minutes of terror

    A rocket-powered crane lowered an 899-kilogram rover onto the floor of Gale Crater on cables. The system had never been flown, and it worked first time.

  4. 31 May – 9 December 2013Follow the Water

    Curiosity measures the radiation dose of a Mars trip

    The rover's dosimeter logged 1.8 millisieverts a day in transit and 0.67 on the floor of Gale Crater — a round trip comes to roughly one sievert, two thirds past NASA's career ceiling.

  5. 10 June 2018 – 13 February 2019Follow the Water

    A planet-wide dust storm finishes Opportunity

    A dust cloud spotted on 30 May 2018 grew to cover Mars and blacked out the sky over a rover that had driven 45 km on a 90-day warranty.

  6. 10 February – 15 May 2021The Present Push

    China arrives at Mars and lands a rover on its first try

    Tianwen-1 entered orbit on 10 February and dropped Zhurong onto Utopia Planitia three months later — orbiter, lander and rover delivered on a country's first attempt.

  7. 18 February 2021The Present Push

    Perseverance lands in Jezero, and we watch it happen

    Five off-the-shelf cameras filmed the parachute opening and the sky crane lowering a one-tonne rover into a dry river delta. The descent microphone recorded nothing usable.

  8. July 2024The Present Push

    Leopard spots in a Martian mudstone

    Perseverance drilled a rock ringed with vivianite and greigite. On Earth microbes make those minerals; on Mars nobody has yet found a plain chemical route that fits.

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