Curiosity (rover) ground then fired several pyrotechnic fasteners activating cable cutters on the bridle to free itself from the spacecraft descent stage. The descent stage then flew away to a crash landing, and the rover prepared itself to begin the science portion of the mission. Live video showing the first footage from the surface of Mars was available at NASA TV, during the late hours of August 6, 2012 PDT, including interviews with the mission team. The NASA website momentarily became unavailable from the overwhelming number of people visiting it, and a 13-minute NASA excerpt of the landings on its YouTube channel
Mount Sharp begin an journey from the Glenelg area to the base of Aeolis Mons. On November 13, 2013, NASA announced that an entryway "Curiosity" would traverse on its way to Aeolis Mons was to be named "Murray Buttes", in honor of planetary scientist Bruce C. Murray (1931–2013). The trip was expected to take about a year and would include stops along the way to study the local terrain. On September 11, 2014, NASA announced that the "Curiosity" rover had reached Aeolis Mons, the rover mission's long-term prime destination. On October 5, 2015, possible recurrent slope lineae, wet brine flows, were reported