Curiosity has cleared a Martian sand dune and is now on a much less rocky path toward its ultimate destination of Mount Sharp.
Two mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. tweeted messages indicating the obstacle had been completed, Discovery News reported. Noah Warner and Matt Heverly each posted the same photo of the wheel tracks Curiosity left on the dune.
"Over the dune and through the gap we go. Image looking back at our tracks across the Dingo Gap dune," Warner's message read late Thursday night.
Only a few hours later, early Friday morning, Heverly, the rover's driver, tweeted: "Seeing this picture from the bottom of the sand dune put an even bigger smile on my face today."
Both JPL Curiosity mission managers posted the above photo with their message.
Tuesday, the rover reached the top of one-meter-high dune, where it parked itself temporarily while mission managers determined whether or not it was safe to proceed downward.
The rover initially attempted to climb the dune to take a path with less sharp rocks across on the surface. Such rocks have caused a significant amount of dents and tears in Curiosity's aluminum wheels. Climbing the dune was also a way for mission managers to determine how well the rover handled slopes.
"These tests are building confidence for operations we are likely to use when Curiosity is on the slopes of Mount Sharp," Daniel Limonadi, systems engineer at JPL, said previously in a news release.
Mission managers likely experienced some white-knuckle moments during the climb, as the Spirit Mars rover was decommissioned in a very similar circumstance. In 2009, the older rover was caught in a sand trap in another region of the Red Planet.
Curiosity will now have an easier path to the base of Mount Sharp, the mountain at the center of the Gale Crater. Mount Sharp is a highly intriguing target for the NASA scientists, as it is believed to hold evidence to Mars' environmental past.
