On 6 August 2012 (UTC) NASA's Curiosity rover, a car-sized laboratory, landed in Gale crater on Mars after a 'seven minutes of terror' descent using a rocket-powered sky crane. It soon found rounded gravels from an ancient stream and mudstones laid down in a lake, and showed that the environment had once offered the chemical ingredients and energy that microbes need. It has since climbed Mount Sharp, drilling rocks along the way, and detected organic molecules and seasonal changes of methane.
Before and after
- 5 July 2012Construction of The Shard
- from 15 July 2012 to 4 August 2012Battle of Damascus
- from 19 July 2012 to 22 December 2016Battle of Aleppo
- 2 August 2012Release of Clash of Clans
- 6 August 2012Curiosity lands in Gale crater
- 16 August 2012Marikana miners' strike
- 25 August 2012Death of Neil Armstrong
- 25 August 2012Voyager 1 enters interstellar space
- 16 September 2012Arctic sea ice reaches a record low
More in Exploration & discovery
- 3 August 1958The USS Nautilus crosses the North Pole under the ice
- 14 July 1965Mariner 4 sends the first close-up pictures of Mars
- 3 December 1973Pioneer 10 flies past Jupiter
- 5 March 1979Voyager 1 reveals Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io
- 26 September 2022DART spacecraft deflects an asteroid
- 23 August 2023Chandrayaan-3 lands near the lunar south pole
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.