A Year of Curiosity on Mars [Watch], NASA “Curiosity Rover team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., re-live the dramatic Aug. 6, 2012 landing and the mission’s achievements to date in an event aired on NASA Television and the agency’s website.” Marc’s note: In case you missed JPL’s Curiosity birthday special today, here it is.

NASA Curiosity Rover Approaches First Anniversary on Mars, NASA “NASA’s Curiosity rover will mark one year on Mars next week and has already achieved its main science goal of revealing ancient Mars could have supported life. The mobile laboratory also is guiding designs for future planetary missions. … Curiosity team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.,will share remembrances about the dramatic landing night and the mission […]

Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover, NASA JPL “A billion-pixel view from the surface of Mars, from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, offers armchair explorers a way to examine one part of the Red Planet in great detail. The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along […]

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Nears Turning Point, NASA “NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission is approaching its biggest turning point since landing its rover, Curiosity, inside Mars’ Gale Crater last summer. Curiosity is finishing investigations in an area smaller than a football field where it has been working for six months, and it will soon shift to a distance-driving mode headed for an area about 5 miles (8 kilometers) away, at […]

CuriousMars: Triple Sample Set for SAM, as NASA Cheers Revived Plutonium Production “Restarting science operations after 3 weeks of computer problems, the Mars rover Curiosity will be using its robotic arm and the Goddard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory to process a triple-dose of drilled subsurface rock in a more intense search for organic carbon before April 4, when Mars will move behind the Sun blocking communications until May […]

CuriousMars: Rover’s SAM organic and CheMin Labs Outrun Computer Snafu For Extra Rock Analysis, SpaceRef “Scientists with the $2.5 billion Mars rover Curiosity will reveal potentially historic discoveries about Mars next week in Washington D. C.” “There are indications that the planned March 12 NASA Headquarters briefing could reveal the finding of organic carbon on Mars – “key ingredients” for life on Mars, as the space agency reinforced this week.”

CuriousMars: SAM and CheMin Ace Rock Analysis, Ready for More, SpaceRef “The Mars rover Curiosity is this week in the midst of potentially historic discoveries as the full range of its capabilities are brought to bear for the first time on a gray powdered Martian subsurface rock sample.” “The sample, drilled from within a mudstone type rock, was totally unexpected this early in the mission and could reveal whether this […]

CuriousMars: Rover Poised to Test For Organics Where Habitability Potential is High, SpaceRef “The Mars rover Curiosity’s team is beginning to amass enough diverse science data to actively consider whether the area around its first drilling site was potentially habitable. At the same time the science team is readying the rover’s most powerful instruments to search for organic carbon and minerals supportive to life in its first sample of gray […]

CuriousMars: Scientists Disagree on Timing of Departure from Drilling Site, SpaceRef “The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover is beginning detailed analysis of the first subsurface rock sample acquired on another planet, keeping researchers on “pins and needles” about whether Curiosity has struck Martian paydirt 216 million miles (348 million km) from Earth.” “Preliminary examination of the greenish, mudstone-like sample is peaking interest and debate about whether the flat […]

NASA Curiosity Rover Drills Hole into Martian Surface, NASA “NASA’s Curiosity rover has, for the first time, used a drill carried at the end of its robotic arm to bore into a flat, veiny rock on Mars and collect a sample from its interior. This is the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars. The fresh hole, about 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) […]