NASA's Curiosity Rover Just Spent Its 2,000th Day on Mars

space.com

71 points·el_duderino··10 comments

This number is in Sols, Martian days. I believe Curiousity landed on Mars on Aug 6, 2012, which makes it 2056 Earth days.

Is it odd that I assumed they meant Sols from the start? The headline seemed clear to me.

> Curiosity has driven 11.6 miles (18.7 km) since landing on Mars

Is that distance from landing, or total traversed? ~3km/year seems somewhat slow, even considering extreme risk aversion. Is it making frequent stops to collect samples?

The RTG powering it only produces 100w of power, so it’s not moving fast and most of that power each day is probably used on the science payloads.

It's top speed is 0.09 mph... and it frequently stops for samples, technical issues (computer glitches, wheel performance, etc), or simply to stay alive (solar panels supplement the RTG; in the winter it must remain on terrain pointing north)

I am unaware of it having any solar panels, and took a good look at the high-res photos while it was being assembled at JPL... It's RTG and battery only.

perhaps you're thinking of spirit and/or opportunity?

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=cur...

whoops, you're right! I mixed up my rovers, I was thinking about opportunity

Hopefully one day ESA will also use radioisotope thermoelectric generators... :( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)

Philae didn't have the mass to spare for an RTG. And Rosetta was just fine with solar power.

https://www.xkcd.com/695/

Maybe one day he can meet his elder brother there. He's quite lonely.

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