On This Day In Space: Nov. 26, 2011: NASA’s Curiosity rover launches to Mars.
Curiosity was the biggest and most powerful rover anyone had ever sent to the Red Planet. The two-ton science laboratory is about the size of a small SUV. The mission’s goal was to search for habitable environments on Mars, or evidence that the planet could have been habitable in the past.
Within weeks, Curiosity fulfilled its mission. It found evidence of ancient running water on Mars. It later found organic molecules on Mars as well.
It launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. About nine months later, Curiosity made a challenging landing on Mars. It successfully used a new landing technology called a sky crane to gently lower it to the surface.
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