The Year On Mars: The Red Planet’s Greatest Moments Of 2012

From seven minutes of terror to Bradbury Landing to cookie dough, NASA's Mars rovers had a big year.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

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We are bidding farewell to an epic year for space explorers, who for the past 12 months have been graced with some of the best images and best science ever to come down from another planet. With no slight to Cassini, Voyager or the others, which are also still sending many happy returns, 2012 was all about Mars.

Many of you were glued to your livestreams and Twitter feeds in August–and through the onset of winter–for the touchdown and first rolls of the Mars rover Curiosity. Its intrepid sibling, Opportunity, also made some crazy new finds this year. There is a lot more to come in 2013, of course. But click through our gallery to see some of the best highlights from the Year In Mars.

 

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Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about astronomy, zoonoses and everything in between. She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and her work regularly appears in Popular Science, New Scientist, FiveThirtyEight, Wired, and many other publications for adults and kids. Rebecca grew up in Colorado, a mile closer to space, and now lives in St. Louis, near the confluence of the continent's two mightiest rivers.