Made It! Mars Rover Climbs Mount Sharp [VIDEO]

[Credit: NASA]
After some significant difficulties and a major detour along the way, the NASA's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, has made it to the next major landmark of its ongoing journey across the Red Planet's surface.

The landmark, Mount Sharp, is a Mount-Rainer Sized mountain located near the center of the Massive Gale Crater, the same region that Curiosity set down in back in 2012.

Back in late June, Curiosity finally rolled out of a predestinated "safe-zone" where the robot's landing craft was meant to set down with little obstruction form the Mars terrain. However, outside of this zone, things were expected to get much rougher.

And they certainly did. On its way to its next major goal, Mount Sharp, the rover found itself skidding in an unexpected sand-trap in the planet's ominously-named Hidden Valley.

"We need to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the wheels and Martian sand ripples, and Hidden Valley is not a good location for experimenting," Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson said in a statement, adding that the rover would be turning around to take a long detour.

But now that the rover has finally reached its destination, the next leg of its journey begins.

Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world," announced Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us."

The rover's team has even plotted out a new path for the next leg of Curosity's journey. (Scroll to read on...)

Jennifer Trosper, the Curiosity Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) adds that while the safety of the rover is taken into consideration with each decision, the Hidden Valley set-back had little to do with their latest decision.

"The wheels issue contributed to taking the rover farther south sooner than planned, but it is not a factor in the science-driven decision to start ascending here rather than continuing to Murray Buttes first," she explained. " Now that we've made it [to Mount Sharp], we'll be adjusting the operations style from a priority on driving to a priority on conducting the investigations needed at each layer of the mountain."

The team plans to use a number of destinations on Mount Sharp to study geological layers that display different chapters in the environmental evolution of Mars.