Is the Curiosity Rover still working and active on the Red Planet?

NASA is scheduled to send a robotic rover to Mars on Thursday, July 30, to search for ancient life on the Red Planet. The mission will be carried out using the Mars Perseverance Rover which will leave for the Red Planet on the Atlas V-541 rocket on Thursday, July 30. Perseverance is a car-size wheeled robot that bears resemblance to the popular rover, Curiosity.

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Curiosity is a supersized rover that is also considered as one of the most technologically advanced rovers ever created. And considering the technology that went into this machine, the rover came with a staggering price tag of $2.5 billion, which also drew a lot of criticism from media and the general public at the time.

It launched nearly a decade ago from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, and had a successful landing on the Mar’s Crater on August 6, 2012. This was one of the biggest missions that involved a number of complex landing manoeuvres that were never seen before.

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Is the Curiosity Rover still working?

Unlike the Mars rover Opportunity, Curiosity is still functional and is the only active rover on Mars right now. As of July 29, 2020, the rover has been active on the red planet for a total of 2837 sols since landing on the Mars' Crater. For the unversed, Sol is a term for Solar day and is mainly used by the planetary scientists to distinguish it for its slightly longer solar day compared to that of the Earth. This comes to a total of 2914 Earth days.

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The Opportunity rover, which was also on the red planet and broke records for extraterrestrial travels, was announced dead last year. NASA had stated that a layer of dust covered certain panels on the solar-powered robot, following which it completely went silent and was unable to start up. However, there was no rescue mission from NASA’s end to get the rover up and running again.

And while it was believed that Curiosity might eventually rescue Opportunity after its launch mission, the problem was that Curiosity is just a space explorer which couldn’t carry out repair operations.

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Image credits: NASA