Curiosity (rover) Curiosity (rover) Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL). "Curiosity" was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC. The Bradbury Landing site was less than from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a journey. The rover's goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental
Opportunity (rover) early June 2018, a large global-scale dust storm developed and within a few days the rover's solar panels were not generating enough power to maintain communications, with last contact on June 10, 2018. NASA stated they did not expect to resume communication until after the global dust storm subsided, but the rover kept silent even after the storm ended in early-October, suggesting either a catastrophic failure or a layer of dust covered its solar panels. The team remains hopeful that a windy period between November 2018 and January 2019 may clear the dust from its solar panels, as has happened