NASA's Curiosity Rover Just Spent Its 2,000th Day on Mars!

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has surpassed its 2,000th day on Mars. To celebrate, NASA unveiled this new panorama from Curiosity showing the mound Mount Sharp (which the rover is climbing) and a region of clay materials (highlighted in white) that the rove
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has surpassed its 2,000th day on Mars. To celebrate, NASA unveiled this new panorama from Curiosity showing the mound Mount Sharp (which the rover is climbing) and a region of clay materials (highlighted in white) that the rover will study next. This image was taken in January 2018 and released March 22. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

Oh, what a trip it's been for the Curiosity rover on Mars.

This week, NASA's nuclear-powered rover celebrated its 2,000th Martian day (or Sol) on the Red Planet, but don't expect a pit stop any time soon.

Curiosity's milestone day caught the rover in the act of climbing 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) Mars mountain called Mount Sharp. To mark the occasion, NASA unveiled a new vista of Mount Sharp as seen by Curiosity earlier this year in January (taken during Sol 1931). [More Spectacular Mars Views by Curiosity]

"Looming over the image is Mount Sharp, the mountain Curiosity has been climbing since September 2014," NASA officials wrote Thursday (March 22). "In the center of the image is the rover's next big, scientific target: an area scientists have studied from orbit and have determined contains clay minerals."

Clay minerals would have needed water to form, and scientists already know the lower regions of Mount Sharp formed in lakes that once dotted the floor of Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed in August 2012.

Curiosity has driven 11.6 miles (18.7 km) since landing on Mars on a mission to determine if the region could ever have been habitable for primitive life.

"In 2013, the mission found evidence of an ancient freshwater-lake environment that offered all the basic chemical ingredients for microbial life," NASA officials wrote. "Since reaching Mount Sharp in 2014, Curiosity has examined environments where both water and wind have left their marks."

The region was likely habitable for microbes for millions of years, they added.

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Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.