Aeolis Palus Aeolis Palus Aeolis Palus is a plain between the northern wall of Gale crater and the northern foothills of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp) on Mars. It is located at . The NASA Mars Science Laboratory mission landed the "Curiosity" rover on Aeolis Palus in August 2012. "Curiosity" spent two (Earth) years exploring the plain as it drove towards Aeolis Mons. The rover left the plain in September 2014 when it reached the mountain's foothills. On August 5, 2012, at 10:32 p.m. PDT/mission time (August 6, 2012 at 5:32 UTC), mission control at JPL received a signal from the NASA "Curiosity"
Mars sample-return mission complexity and technical problems. One mission concept (provisionally named simply Mars Sample-Return) was originally considered by NASA's Mars Exploration Program to return samples by 2008, but was cancelled following a review of the program. A NASA-ESA concept mission was aborted in 2012. The United States' Mars Exploration Program, formed after "Mars Observer" failure in September 1992, supported a Mars sample-return. One example of a mission architecture was the "Groundbreaking Mars Sample-Return" by MacPhereson in the early 2000s. In early 2011, the National Research Council's Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which laid out mission planning priorities for the period 2013–2022 at the