Nasa’s Mars rover Curiosity has now marked 2,000 days on the red planet – by Martian standards.
A Martian sol, or solar day, is equivalent to 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds, so 2,000 days on Mars equals 2,055 days here on Earth.
Either way, it is a big milestone this week for scientists eager for Curiosity to begin drilling again, this time into potentially clay-rich rocks on the slopes of Mount Sharp.
Nasa’s Curiosity rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is celebrating 2,000 martian days (sols) investigating Gale Crater on the Red Planet. In that time, the robot has made some remarkable observations https://t.co/LOlUrO9O8o pic.twitter.com/bipadtg7tL
— NationalSpaceCentre (@spacecentre) March 22, 2018
The six-wheeled rover has been exploring Mars since 2012. Altogether, it has travelled 11.6 miles.
Flight controllers are testing a new drilling method.
Curiosity’s drill stopped working properly in 2016 and so engineers devised another way to bore into Martian rocks and get the pulverised rock samples into the rover’s lab instruments.
