Exploration of Mars over the Pacific Ocean. The NASA Mars Science Laboratory mission with its rover named "Curiosity", was launched on November 26, 2011, and landed on Mars on August 6, 2012 on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater. The rover carries instruments designed to look for past or present conditions relevant to the past or present habitability of Mars. NASA's MAVEN is an orbiter mission to study the upper atmosphere of Mars. It will also serve as a communications relay satellite for robotic landers and rovers on the surface of Mars. MAVEN was launched 18 November 2013 and reached Mars on 22 September
ExoMars (rover) ExoMars (rover) The ExoMars rover is a planned robotic Mars rover, part of the international ExoMars programme led by the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation. The plan calls for a Russian launch vehicle, an ESA carrier module and a Russian lander that will deploy the rover to Mars' surface, scheduled to launch in July 2020. Once safely landed, the solar powered rover would begin a seven-month (218-sol) mission to search for the existence of past life on Mars. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in 2016, will operate as the rover's data-relay satellite. The rover is