How JPL Keeps the 13-Year-Old Curiosity Rover Doing Science

Source: IEEE Spectrum Robotics·2026-06-09 20:00Publish time unverified

Thirteen years ago last August, I was camped out in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory press room in Pasadena, Calif., waiting to see whether the Curiosity rover would survive its descent and skycrane-assisted landing on the surface of Mars. It did, and it was awesome. Since then, Curiosity (also known as Mars Science Laboratory) has traveled nearly 37 kilometers, drilled into and sampled 42 different rocks, and as of publication has snapped nearly 763,000 photos.