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
Crewed Mars rover are a component of many designs for a human mission to the planet Mars. For example, the Austere Human Missions to Mars proposal proposed including two rovers on its unmanned power and logistics cargo lander. Each rover could hold a crew of two in a pressurized environment, with power coming from a Stirling radioisotope generator. Mars One, a Mars colonization plan intended to be funded by a TV show, plans an unpressurized crewed rover capable of traveling 80 km (50 miles). They said a possible supplier was Astrobotic Technology. The Manned Mars Exploration Rover (MMER) won a design award in