August 4, 2016
Cosmos Editorial
As Curiosity marks its fourth anniversary (in Earth years) since landing on Mars, the rover is working on collecting its 17th sample.
During its time trundling around the red planet, Curiosity has returned more than 128,000 images and fired its laser more than 362,000 times. As of the fourth anniversary, it traversed 13.57 kilometres of terrain on the red planet.
Currently on a multi-month ascent toward higher and progressively younger geological evidence on Mount Sharp, the rover hopes to explore some new rock types and provide even more information on the layered mountain inside Gale Crater.
