Curiosity Rover hits three years on Mars — check out these must-see photos

Does time fly or what? It’s been three years since NASA’s Curiosity Rover touched down on Martian soil, and ever since then, it’s had three productive and eventful years. It was on the night of August 5, 2012 that the one-ton rover pulled off its dramatic landing with the aid of a rocket-powered “sky crane” to begin its journey on the Red Planet. 

The Curiosity rover standing proud. Image: NASA.

The six-wheeled robot then set out on its mission to determine if the 96-mile-wide crater named Gale could ever support microbial life. It observed rocks near its landing site known as Yellowknife Bay, which allowed mission scientists to deduce that Gale Crater supported a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system for long stretches in the ancient past.

Once done exploring the Yellowknife Bay area, Curiosity began its trek toward Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles into the Martian sky from the center of Gale. The rover team is counting on Curiosity to climb through the mountain’s lower reaches to read a history of Mars’ changing environmental conditions in the rocks along the way.

Curiosity reached the mountain last September, and drilled into rocks three separate times for analysis purpose.

So where is the beloved rover now? Currently, Curiosity sits at an elevation somewhere between 66 to 98 feet above Gale Crater’s floor, preparing to possibly climb 1,650 feet to sample different layers of Mount Sharp.

Now that you have some backstory to this epic journey, check out the breath-taking images of Mars’ surface below, snapped by the adventurous rover itself. (PS: These would make amazing desktop backgrounds.)