China’s first Mars mission, a joint effort with Russia in 2011, never made it past Earth’s orbit. The U.S. rover Perseverance, by contrast, will dive in straight away for a harrowing sky-crane touchdown similar to the Curiosity rover’s grand Martian entrance in 2012. Smashed Russian and European spacecraft litter the Martian landscape, meanwhile, along with NASA’s failed Mars Polar Lander from 1999. It even kept the European and Russian space agencies' joint Mars mission grounded until the next launch window in 2022. AdPerseverance's deputy project manager Matt Wallace, who’s working his fifth Mars rover mission, said the pandemic won’t dampen the mood come landing day.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover has been driving around for 2, 696 martian days and it just set a record for climbing its steepest yet. To celebrate, it took a selfie. Curiosity’s mass cam took 86 different images from different angles like a panorama. NASA was able to seamlessly stitch the images together to create the selfie. How did we get the video of Curiosity taking the pictures?

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Mars surface. If you need help with the Public File, call (313) 222-0566.

Now, Curiosity has found sediments containing sulfate salt in the crater, which suggest it once held salty lakes. The new detection of sulfate salts came from sedimentary rocks dated to between 3.3 and 3.7 billion years ago. Gale Crater was created by an ancient impact, then filled in with sediment layers over time. Mount Sharp, the mountain at its center, was created by wind erosion of the hardened sediment layers. The sulfate salts represent a different finding from Curiosity's evidence of freshwater lakes in the foundation of Mount Sharp back in 2015.