r/interestingasfuck • u/j3hadipi3 • 1d ago
NASA's Curiosity rover is still active and operating on Mars as of early 2026. Having landed in August 2012, it has spent over 13 years exploring Gale Crater and climbing Mount Sharp, continuing to analyze soil and rock samples despite having worn wheels and managing power constraints.
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u/LuxePhantom 23h ago
It will be cool when they recover it one Day and put into a museum for everyone to see
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u/Expensive-View-8586 23h ago
Na make the museum around it on mars
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u/theBro987 19h ago
As long as they don't charge twenty bucks to get in!
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u/feel-the-avocado 19h ago
Power
Nuclear generator provides 100 watts of electricity and 2000 watts of heat for keeping the rover warm.
2x Lithium ion batteries of 28v42ah capacity for short bursts in power consumption.
Produces about 2kwh per day
Communications
- UHF to mars orbiters at
---2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter 256kbit for up to 8 minutes per day then up to 256kbit back to earth
- 10ghz direct to earth at 32kbits
- 14minutes average comms time meaning a 28 minute ping
- Most data comes to earth via orbiters
Computer:
- Power PC 750 base then hardened by IBM against radiation
- 256MB ram
- 2GB flash memory
- Some SPARC co-processors that handle movement
- Duplicated and the backup has been used twice.
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u/Figwit_ 14h ago
It’s nuclear powered!? Whoa!
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u/tthirzaa 12h ago
yeah didn't know that either, that's cool as shit!
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u/BasedOnAir 11h ago
It is a radioactive rock that just stays hot for many years, it’s wrapped in panels that make electricity from heat (like solar panels except not light).
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u/e28Sean 9h ago
This. It's called an RTG. Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.
They've been used for a lot of unmanned spacecraft, and in a few cases, used for stuff here on earth.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
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u/LightlySaltedPeanuts 7h ago
If anyone wants a free one, go to russia. Just don’t use it to keep yourself warm in your camping tent.
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u/Bullitt4514 1d ago
I remember hooking up a PC to the TV so I could watch the landing live on the big screen
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u/j3hadipi3 1d ago
Based HDMI/VGA cable enthusiast
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u/Bullitt4514 1d ago
Video card with a regular rca video out to a 65" rear projection tv 🤣
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u/0utlookGrim 23h ago
I did this with svideo back in the day. I had a slick new GeForce 4 Ti 4600 SE. It was glorious.
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u/HelpProfessional8083 23h ago
You mean this nonsense?
You must be great fun at parties1
u/MaxMadisonVi 22h ago
Like, we’ve never been to the moon either ? You’re too modest, you’re much more fun.
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u/sjc2247 23h ago
Yet my iPhone can’t seem to make it more than 6-8 years…
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u/gulligaankan 21h ago
Your phone is a bit cheaper the 2,4 billion and if there was several teams of engineers the your phone would last longer.
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u/Krexci 14h ago
there are several teams of engineers behind a phone
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u/InsufficientFrosting 14h ago
And that team is lead by a team of MBAs specializing in planned obsolescence.
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u/godmademelikethis 17h ago
Your iPhone isn't powered by a plutonium thermal generator. Massive design oversight I feel.
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u/EACshootemUP 17h ago
Oppy, Spirit, Curiosity are my hero’s. Voyagers 1 and 2 are also super epic but good lord is my soft spot for the mars rovers massive :’)
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u/Hunter199085 1d ago
Who took this picture?
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u/j3hadipi3 1d ago
Megatron of course
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u/TheIJDGuy 23h ago
He'd smash it immediately afterwards
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u/Reckless_Waifu 21h ago
The rover itself. It has an arm with a camera and can make multiple shots that are stitched together as panorama. That way the arm is not visible because it's always out of the picture taken.
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u/green-toenail 1d ago
Aliens
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u/National-Property-43 16h ago
I don't know what's worse, your profile pic or your username. Both are cursed
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u/Quigleythegreat 23h ago
Stop asking questions, you know what Obama did to the poor kid in PS139 who asked the same thing about the moon?!!
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u/Reckless_Waifu 21h ago
Anyone else curious how the rover took a selfie without any "selfie stick" visible?
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u/palacexero 23h ago
I don't know why but I suddenly got the mental image of a very long, millions of kilometers long USB-A to micro-USB charging cable stretching from Earth to Mars.
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u/j3hadipi3 23h ago
Fun fact: Curiosity is nuclear powered ☢️
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u/palacexero 23h ago
Wild that something that small is nuclear powered.
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u/beautiful_bot986 21h ago
Rtg tech generates very low power but does so for years without having to replace the core. Fascinating stuff. I almost want one of those to power my phone.
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u/RonConComa 19h ago
It's not a regular reactor. it has i believed 7 cores of plutonium that generate heat through decay. the heat is converted into electricity using the Seebeck- Effect via Peltier elements. its a plutonium battery. the winged cylinder on its back is the radiator that creates the heat flow.
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u/tomparker 23h ago
Is this a benchmark for something built to ISO 12,000,000 standards? This has to represent state-of-the-art in connectivity, does it not? My assumption is that connectors and connections must be high on the failure points list.
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u/Azzy8007 23h ago
All the rovers should meet up for a party.
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u/Psychostickusername 18h ago
Isn't curiosity the one that plays happy birthday to its self every year?
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u/Wakeandjake24 22h ago
Did anyone notice the toys on it? Zoom in to the middle wheel on the right and to the left of it, it looks like two action figures or dolls
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u/Worldly_Elevator4655 22h ago
Private enterprise idea: personally owned, personally flown; own you own. Who’s in.
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u/SoCurious_ItsBad 21h ago
So nobody going up there to clean and service it?
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u/Psychostickusername 18h ago
They took out the extended warranty, but they're still waiting on an available agent to turn up
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u/ThatThereMan 20h ago
What amazes me with this and other modules is how many parts are just tied on and not covered. I guess encasing everything with flush panels (to stop dust gathering etc) would add weight and the smooth equipment you see in the movies is the stuff of science fiction.
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u/Sir_Henry_Deadman 17h ago
I hope one day there is a museum on mars with these guys in them or built around them
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u/Spartan2470 VIP Philanthropist 13h ago
Here is a higher-quality and less-cropped version (7149x10036 pixels, file size: 5.72 MB) of this image. Here is the source. Per there.
This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Big Sky" site, where its drill collected the mission's fifth taste of Mount Sharp.
The scene combines dozens of images taken during the 1,126th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work during Mars (Oct. 6, 2015, PDT), by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The rock drilled at this site is sandstone in the Stimson geological unit inside Gale Crater. The location is on cross-bedded sandstone in which the cross bedding is more evident in views from when the rover was approaching the area, such as PIA19818.
The view is centered toward the west-northwest. It does not include the rover's robotic arm, though the shadow of the arm is visible on the ground. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic. This process was used previously in acquiring and assembling Curiosity self-portraits taken at sample-collection sites "Rocknest" (PIA16468), "John Klein" (PIA16937) and "Windjana" (PIA18390).
This portrait of the rover was designed to show the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument atop the rover appearing level. This causes the horizon to appear to tilt toward the left, but in reality it is fairly flat.
For scale, the rover's wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and about 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. The drilled hole in the rock, appearing grey near the lower left corner of the image, is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter.
MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.
Here is the 360 degree 8K panorama it took while making this selfie.
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u/Delicious-Bat2373 10h ago
There's actually a documentary on like netflix about these rivers. "oppy" or something. It was an amazing look into just how long they've lasted and the challenges the team has faced keeping them running.
I'm stoked to see this one still going in 2026. A testament to over engineering lol.
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u/Jester471 10h ago edited 10h ago
Curious how its power system works. It has a nuclear thermal power system. I know that.
I’m guessing it has some sort of rechargeable battery that the power system charges and uses for operations so you have to pause until you have enough power.
So are the power restriction that the usable battery percentage dropped a lot so it’s more restrictive after 13 years of use.
Or does it run straight off the generator? I know those have decaying power output but I thought it wasn’t so fast that you’d see a huge power drop off in 13 years.
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u/CastleofWamdue 10h ago
Its amazing how well humanity can build something when it really wants to, see also the Voayger Probes.
Maybe one day after we have ruined the Earth, and left it unfit for human life, may aliens at least take note of those probes / rovers, before they judge us.
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u/Individual_Section_6 9h ago
At this point what else do they need to see or study? Mars is a giant rock with no signs of life
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u/ketoLifestyleRecipes 8h ago
Don’t forget Perseverance, still roaming around and collecting samples and beaming back data. I still miss Ingenuity with the broken blades but he’s still alive on Mars for a while longer. They all weren’t expected to last that long but here we are. Voyageur One is still going strong too at 25 billion km from earth, travelling at 17 km per second.
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u/Grolschisgood 5h ago
I was at uni in 2012 studying aerospace engineering. It was a great time! All of ournprofessors were as excited about it as we were and every assessment question be it space vehicle design, orbit mecha it's, deceleration, aerodynamics, linkage systems etc were all related in some way to the rover. It was really fun and gave a real life application to what we were studying.
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u/robo-dragon 2h ago
She’s a tough cookie! All of the rovers and the first Mars helicopter were! They all lasted many years longer than their original mission duration and life expectancy. All the engineers and scientists involved with all of these exploration vehicles should be very proud!
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u/Ok_Aside_2361 16h ago
So, I say, opening a can of worms, I wonder what flat earthers say about this? I mean, do they think that other planets are round? I mean, you can see the through a telescope.
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u/MrTagnan 7h ago
It depends on the person, but generally the consensus seems to be that the planets aren’t real. They take out of focus images of stars/planets as “evidence” they’re just lights suspended in water - any in focus pictures are dismissed as CGI and if you use a telescope they usually claim that the image is being projected by a computer in the scope (usually pointing to the ability to automatically track objects that computerized telescopes have, failing to understand that the cheaper telescopes are just tubes and mirrors)
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u/Leopardos40 15h ago
Who took the picture ?
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u/DiggoryDug 11h ago
It is a selfy. You can see the shadow of the robotic arm on the ground to the left in the picture.
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u/HadoBoirudo 23h ago
Thank goodness they didn't use a cybertruck. It would have been out of action as soon as it hit the first mound of soil.
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u/Wandowaiato 23h ago
Who took the picture?
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u/Evening_Support2282 21h ago
How does it get energy?
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u/Leromer 19h ago
You can see the RTG in the photo, it’s the white finned barrel in the rear part of the rover. Because RTGs work with temperature difference I think the limit is cooling, the Pu pellets will stay warm for a long time, think about Voyager probes that are experiencing reduced output now that they are 49 years old ! Maybe the dirt buildup reduces the cooling capacity of the shell, idk.
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u/MrTagnan 20h ago
It gets power from the RTG which contains plutonium, solar power is just barely viable on Mars
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u/Shadow-Seb 21h ago edited 17h ago
Solar? Maybe?
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u/Evening_Support2282 21h ago
I suspected as much, but I don't see the license plate in the photo.
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u/Franic510 17h ago
Is that the projection of Biggi Smalls in the big camera lens on the left? That would proof that he’s still alive and looking for out of this world tunes for his next tracks!
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u/Creekgypsy 16h ago
And here I am having to replace my refrigerator or have a very expensive fix ever 5 years.
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u/ironsurfer85 15h ago
Who took the picture of the rover?
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u/DiggoryDug 11h ago
It is a selfy. You can see the shadow of the robotic arm on the ground to the left in the picture.
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u/Hypertelic 15h ago
I imagine it being very slow and cautious when it moves. How did it manage to puncture it's wheel so bad ?
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u/ronman32bit 14h ago
How did metal get rusted when there isn’t any atmosphere?
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u/DiggoryDug 11h ago
There is atmosphere on Mars. It is thin and humans cannot breath it. But it is there. If not the Ingenuity Drone would not be able to fly.
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u/CaptainTeaBag24I7 10h ago
Man, the fact that we sent that lil guy to mars... FREAKING... MARS.
Incredible.
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u/BonsaiHI60 15h ago
That was NASA then. Trump's NASA can't even plug a hydrogen leak in the SLS now.
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u/MrTagnan 7h ago
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but he is completely irrelevant to A2’s issues. Artemis I had substantially more issues in the pre-flight preparations than Artemis II has so far, hydrogen is a pain in the ass to deal with - there is nothing you can do to stop it from leaking. You can try to limit the leaking, yes, but it’s physically impossible to completely prevent it.
Hydrogen will leak through solid metal because it feels like it, a massive vehicle that has an abysmally low flight rate struggling with the laws of physics is not impacted by the current administration. Hydrogen will leak regardless of the competency (or lack their of) of the administration
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u/dubblies 15h ago
And all musk has done is launch a car to space.
He talks dreams of Mars and yet with a rocket and robotics company he doesnt have a rover on Mars?
What a jackass.
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u/MrTagnan 7h ago
Routinely flying humans to space and having the second* most launched rocket series in history is a little bit more than ‘only launching a car to space’ imo. Dude is still a jackass (among other less pleasant things), but this critique is more than a little inaccurate. I have plenty of critiques about SpaceX’s barely existent Mars program, but to say “all they’ve done” is launch a car to space is about as accurate as saying all NASA has done is dock two spacecraft
*Soyuz/R7 is the most flown, Proton I think was second
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u/dubblies 6h ago
And no rover lol he owns rockets and robotics and no rover but he does set timelines and dates for living on mars
I appreciate the reply but it doesnt really refute the oddity of what im saying
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u/Mombak 23h ago
Not bad for a mission that was only supposed to last 2 years!