Curiosity rover lands on Mars

In the early hours of 6 August 2012, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory passed around jars of lucky peanuts and stared at their screens. Radio signals from Mars took nearly fourteen minutes to reach Earth, and the landing would take seven. Whatever was about to unfold on their displays had, in reality, already happened. The rover they had spent eight years and 2.5 billion dollars building was either sitting safely in Gale Crater or scattered across it. NASA had named the gauntlet honestly: seven minutes of terror.

The Mars Science Laboratory hit the atmosphere at about 21,000 kilometres per hour and, for the first time at Mars, steered itself through entry like a returning spacecraft, flying toward a target ellipse just 20 by 7 kilometres. The largest supersonic parachute ever flown bled off speed, the heat shield fell away, and then came the gamble nothing could fully test on Earth: a rocket-powered descent stage hovered and lowered the one-tonne, 899-kilogram rover on a 7.5-metre nylon bridle. The sky crane set Curiosity gently onto its wheels, cut the cords, and flew off to crash at a safe distance.

At 05:17 UTC, relayed through the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the call came: touchdown confirmed. Mission control erupted. Within minutes Curiosity returned its first pictures, its own shadow stretching across the gravel of Aeolis Palus. The rover had landed about 2.4 kilometres from the centre of its ellipse, the most precise Mars landing ever flown, and flight director Bobak Ferdowsi's stars-and-stripes mohawk became an overnight internet sensation.

Two weeks later NASA named the spot Bradbury Landing, on what would have been Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday. Powered by a plutonium generator, Curiosity went on to prove that Gale Crater once held a lake with water mild enough to drink, and it is still climbing Mount Sharp today, more than thirteen years on. Its sky crane flew again in 2021, lowering Perseverance to the floor of Jezero Crater.