OTD In Space – August 6: Curiosity Rover Lands On Mars

On Aug. 6, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover successfully touched down on the Martian surface.

Curiosity is NASA's biggest and most ambitious Mars rover ever launched. Its landing involved a new kind of maneuver that had never been tried before using something called a "sky crane." Like previous rovers that have landed on Mars, Curiosity used a parachute and rocket engines to slow down. But while other rovers used airbags to cushion the last part of the fall, Curiosity's rocket-propelled sky crane hovered over the ground and gently lowered it with cables.