Mars Science Laboratory landing site location was an elliptical area . Gale Crater's diameter is . The landing location for the rover was less than from the center of the planned landing ellipse, after a journey. NASA named the rover landing site Bradbury Landing on sol , August 22, 2012. According to NASA, an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 heat-resistant bacterial spores were on "Curiosity" at launch, and as much as 1,000 times that number may not have been counted. Mars Science Laboratory Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully
Sol (day on Mars) Mars Sol Date is defined mathematically as MSD = (Julian Date using International Atomic Time - 2451549.5 + "k")/1.02749125 + 44796.0, where "k" is a small correction of approximately 0.00014 d (or 12 s) due to uncertainty in the exact geographical position of the prime meridian at Airy-0 crater. The word "yestersol" was coined by the NASA Mars operations team early during the MER mission to refer to the previous sol (the Mars version of "yesterday"), and came into fairly wide use within that organization during the Mars Exploration Rover Mission of 2003. It was eventually picked up and used