It has cost Rs 15,000 crore and counting. It may have travelled only 1.6 km in a year and plans to traverse all of eight km in its second year. Its cameras through which we saw Mars helped open our eyes and broaden our vision, which alone might have made the effort behind the Curiosity worthwhile.
The statistics are impressive enough to have whetted the curiosity for more — 190 gigabits of data, 36,700 full images, 35,000 thumbnail images and the firing of more than 75,000 laser shots to help analyse the composition of Martian material.
It is unlikely life in any form that we can recognise as anywhere close to human may have listened on August 6 to Curiosity singing Happy Birthday to itself — Nasa scientists apparently prefer to call their baby a feminine “she”. The data collected suggests the presence of some life-supporting elements. How fortunate we on Earth are because our planet lies in the Goldilocks zone — neither too hot nor too cold and hence sustaining intelligent life as we know it — is reiterated whenever we see what lies yonder in wide, wide space.
With an atmosphere 100 times denser than Earth and radiation levels far above what humans can endure, man may never get to inhabit Mars. But the eternal ache of human curiosity and the fear that our exploding population and proportionately depleting resources will one day force us to live on another planet as the gateway to colonising space may drive such projects on. Putting rovers on the red planet with a grey underbelly has signified the height of human endeavour in space exploration so far.