As NASA's Curiosity rover completes 10 yrs on Mars, here's a look at its achievements

At 11:02 am (IST) on August 6, the Curiosity rover became the fourth robotic explorer to touch down on Mars to hunt for signs of ancient life on the red planet. Currently, NASA is celebrating the 10th landing anniversary of its rover which has made significant accomplishments in the entire course of its mission. Let us take a look at some interesting facts about Curiosity and its achievements over the years. 

Curiosity's features, instruments, and objectives

Curiosity is 9 feet 10 inches long by 9 feet 1 inch wide (3 m by 2.8 m) and weighs about 900 kilograms while standing 7 feet high (2.1 m). Designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the rover can travel up to 200 meters per day and is powered by converting the plutonium-238's radioactive decay into electricity. 

The rover has also been equipped with a wide range of instruments including three cameras-- Mast Camera (Mastcam), Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Mars Descent Imager (MARDI). It also has four spectrometers to characterise the composition of minerals of the Martian rocks and has two radiation detectors to measure the amount of radiation that reaches the red planet's surface. 

The Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) is used by mission teams to monitor the Martian weather and it also has atmospheric sensors called Mars Science Laboratory Entry Descent and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) that were used during the rover's landing. As mentioned above, its objectives are to find signs of ancient life and characterise the planet's climate and geology.

Curiosity's accomplishments

The rover has been the source of many firsts including the determination of both the formation and the exposure age of a rock on the surface of another planet for the first time in 2013. This was possible due to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, one of the four spectrometers, which helped scientists conclude that the rocks around the rim of Gale crater (Curiosity's landing site) were formed about 4 billion years ago, then transported as sediments to Yellowknife Bay. 

Curiosity's second accomplishment came in 2014 when it uncovered evidence in minerals that form in watery environments that have a history of hydrogen escape and water loss. This helped NASA confirm that the habitability of Mars did not end as abruptly and soon as previously thought.

Just a year later, the rover made another ground-breaking discovery-- finding fixed nitrogen in martian rocks. Nitrogen is considered an essential element of life and in its 'fixed' form, it interacts with other molecules to produce biomolecules like proteins and DNA. Again in 2018, NASA announced the discovery of a type of carbon in rock samples that is used as building blocks and "food" for life on Earth. While this did not confirm the presence of life on Mars, it motivated scientists to carry on with their exploration, the agency said. 

In the following year, Curiosity confirmed fluctuations in the abundance of methane in the near-surface atmosphere of the red planet. "On Earth, most of the methane present in the atmosphere gets there thanks to processes from life and fluctuations can be linked to changes in biological processes", NASA said in a statement.