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
Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander is identical to that of the Mars Polar Lander, which had been intended to be the first of a series of low-cost "Mars Surveyor" landers sent to Mars. Prior to mission cancellation, cost overruns and technical problems caused the Lander design to be rescoped, and the planned large Athena rover was replaced by a small rover duplicating the "Sojourner" which was a part of the Mars Pathfinder mission. (The Athena did later make it to Mars, however, with two such rovers making up the Mars Exploration Rover Mission of 2004. The second of these, MER-B "Opportunity", landed at Mars Surveyor