The Rover That Looked for Life!

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]In 2011, a car-sized rover named Curiosity is sent to Mars.

[00:00:05]It is the most sophisticated rover yet.

[00:00:08]It has a number of laboratory instruments on board, so it can actually carry out experiments and analyze any samples that it brings on board.

[00:00:19]The brain trust back at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory determines which soil or rock samples [music] they want Curiosity to examine.

[00:00:28]The way we drive the rover is we bundle up all of the set of instructions for what it's supposed to do for the entire day and send it up uh and it executes it.

[00:00:38]And we call it rover driving, but rover driving includes operating the robotic arm and the sampling system.

[00:00:46]Curiosity's drill sample findings were exciting in that [music] they essentially found elements that are considered to be the building blocks of life.