2001–2012: Planetary Exploration Becomes Persistent
Curiosity (MSL)
Established that Gale Crater once offered habitable conditions.
Era 4 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 26 Nov 2011
- Lead / partner
- United States
- Target
- Mars
- Category
- Mars rover
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- Atlas V 541
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- unknown
Why it happened
Curiosity (MSL) flew during 2001–2012: Planetary Exploration Becomes Persistent, as part of United States's work toward mars. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
The full narrative of this mission is pending research and writing. What is recorded so far: Established that Gale Crater once offered habitable conditions.
Results
Established that Gale Crater once offered habitable conditions.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- Image credit: NASA · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-22)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog