22nd March 2018 Sol 2000

Today we are planning the 2000th sol of operations on Mars. As a martian day is equal to 24 hours and 39 minutes that is equivalent to 2055 Earth days since landing on the 5th August 2012. Many of the Curiosity team are at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference discussing the discoveries we have made over the last 5 years. We have some way to go before we catch up with the Opportunity rover which recently celebrated its 5000th sol. The rovers are proving remarkably durable. In order to mark the 2000 sol milestone we got together our top 12 images which illustrate some of our key findings for the BBC website.

This image was taken by Mastcam/MSSS/JPL and is one of my favourites from the first 2000 sols. At this point Mars was over 150 million km from Earth. Every day scientists from across the world including Leicester drive the rover and analyse the surroundings.