Curiosity Blog, Sols 4954–4960: Celebrating Our Rover Engineers Past and Present

NASA's Curiosity rover team is highlighting the work of its rover engineers, who've kept the robot operating for nearly fourteen years on Mars. According to NASA, this week the team safely positioned the rover to analyze five rock samples while it continues climbing Mount Sharp—a mountain where Curiosity has now traveled over twenty-three miles and achieved forty-four hundred feet of elevation gain. A critical drilling motor failure in twenty sixteen forced engineers to completely redesign how the rover collects rock samples underground, but the adaptation succeeded: Curiosity has drilled over twenty rock targets since the redesign. As the rover studies how rock chemistry and geology vary with elevation, it's the precision and persistence of Earth-based engineers that keeps this iconic explorer safe, mobile, and productive across Mars.

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