Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA’s Mars rover reveals what it’s grateful for this Thanksgiving

By

It’s not just people who are sharing what they’re grateful for during Thanksgiving today — Mars rovers are, too.

In a post on X, NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, shared a message saying: “These stunning views of the Red Planet are a reminder of how vast and mysterious our universe is. What are you grateful for this Thanksgiving?”

Recommended Videos

Accompanying the post is a remarkably detailed view of the rover’s rocky surroundings on the distant planet.

Related

These stunning views of the Red Planet are a reminder of how vast and mysterious our universe is…

What are you grateful for this #Thanksgiving? pic.twitter.com/sev9fq1Pzw

— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) November 28, 2024

One of Curiosity’s many mission goals is to assess Mars’ habitability by determining whether the planet could once have supported microbial life. It’s also been working to characterize the martian climate and geology, and gather data that may be useful for future human exploration of Mars, which could begin in the coming decades.

Some of its notable achievements to date include the discovery of key life-supporting elements such as sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, suggesting that the planet could indeed have had environments that were able to support microbial life. NASA’s newer Mars rover, Perseverance, is following up by searching for signs of ancient microbial life itself, and has been making some interesting discoveries in that field.

Curiosity’s high-resolution cameras have also provided visual evidence of an ancient streambed, indicating that liquid water once flowed on the Martian surface.

But the ongoing work is taking its toll on the aging rover, with recent images showing very obvious damage to its middle-right wheel. Fortunately, the rover’s wheels — even in this sorry state — are robust enough to handle Mars’ rocky terrain.

Twelve years after its arrival, Curiosity is continuing to explore Mars’ Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, making discoveries and sending back breathtaking imagery. And for that, we’re all very grateful.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA reveals date for attempted return flight of troubled Starliner
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked at the space station.

NASA is targeting Friday, September 6, for the return flight of Boeing Space’s troubled Starliner spacecraft, the agency revealed on Thursday.

The vehicle will come home from the International Space Station (ISS) nearly three months later than originally planned and without the crew that it arrived with. The flight, the outcome of which could determine the Starliner’s future, is expected to take about six hours, NASA said in a blog post on Thursday.

Read more
NASA’s axed moon rover could be resurrected by Intuitive Machines
An illustration of NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) on the lunar surface.

Lunar scientists were shocked and dismayed last month when NASA announced that it was canceling work on its moon rover, VIPER. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was intended to search the moon's south pole for evidence of water there, but NASA said that it had to ax the project due to increasing costs.

This week, an open letter to Congress called the cancellation of the mission "unprecedented and indefensible," and questioned NASA's assertion that the cancellation of the mission would not affect plans to send humans to the moon. Scientists argued that the mission was fundamental to understanding the presence of water on the moon, which is a key resource for human exploration, as well as an issue of scientific interest.

Read more
Mars has ‘oceans’ worth’ of water – but it’s deep underground
More than 3 billion years ago, Mars was warm, wet, and had an atmosphere that could have supported life. This artist's rendering shows what the planet may have looked like with global oceans based on today's topography.

One of the key issues for getting humans to Mars is finding a way to get them water. Scientists know that millions of years ago, Mars was covered in oceans, but the planet lost its water over time and now has virtually no liquid water on its surface. Now, though, researchers have identified what they believe could be oceans' worth of water on Mars. There's just one snag: it's deep underground.

The research used data from NASA's now-retired InSight lander, which used a seismometer and other instruments to investigate the planet's interior. They found evidence of what appears to be a large underground reservoir of water, enough to cover the entire planet in about a mile of ocean. But it's inaccessible, being located between 7 to 13 miles beneath the planet's surface. The water is located in between cracks in a portion of the interior called the mid-crust, which sits beneath the dry upper crust that is drillable from the surface.

Read more