On This Day In Space: Aug. 6, 2012: Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars (Image Credit: Space.com)
On Aug. 6, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully touched down on the Martian surface.
Related: Curiosity rover: The ultimate guide
Curiosity is NASA’s biggest and most ambitious Mars rover ever launched.
Its landing involved a new kind of maneuver that had never been tried before using something called a “sky crane.” Like previous rovers that have landed on Mars, Curiosity used a parachute and rocket engines to slow down.
But while other rovers used airbags to cushion the last part of the fall, Curiosity’s rocket-propelled sky crane hovered over the ground and gently lowered it with cables. The landing occurred on Aug. 6 Eastern time, but it was still Aug. 5 in California, where NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages Curiosity’s mission, is based.
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