John Grotzinger, Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology, Caltech
The Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, touched down on the surface of Mars on August 5, 2012. It was built to conduct an investigation of modern and ancient environments. Curiosity has a lifetime of at least one Mars year (~23 months), and drive capability of at least 20 km. The 155-km diameter Gale Crater was chosen as Curiosity's field site based on its regional context and strong evidence for a progression through multiple potentially habitable environments, represented by a stratigraphic record of extraordinary extent, insuring preservation of a rich record of the environmental history of early Mars. Recent mission results will be discussed.