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
SpaceX Red Dragon mission, as originally proposed by NASA Ames Research Center, were: A 2014 study of a potential 2021 NASA-funded "Red Dragon" mission suggested that it could offer a low-cost way for NASA to achieve a Mars sample return. In the concept, the "Red Dragon" capsule would be equipped with the system needed to return samples gathered on Mars, including a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV), and hardware to transfer the sample collected by a previously landed rover mission, such as NASA's planned Mars 2020 rover, to the ERV. The ERV would transfer the samples to high Earth