Michael Winter

USA TODAY

Two years after landing on the Red Planet, the Mars Curiosity rover has reached its primary destination, a peak rising taller than Mount Rainier, NASA announced Thursday.

Curiosity's arrival at the base of Mount Sharp, in the middle of the vast Gale Crater, came sooner than originally planned, because tire damage and accelerated wear forced mission specialists to reroute the rolling laboratory.

The rover will now begin "a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction" to the Red Planet, said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division.

The milestone comes a week after a review panel criticized the mission's scientific findings so far as "a poor science return for such a large investment in a flagship mission." The rover analyzed five surface specimens since landing August 2012.

"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," said Jennifer Trosper, the mission's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Curiosity is to take eight samples while exploring the 18,000-foot mountain during the two-year extension of its mission, which the senior review panel recommended Sept. 3.

The rover will reach the first site, dubbed the Pahrump Hills, in a week or two. NASA scientists said Thursday.

Curiosity began the 5-mile journey from the Glenelg area to the base of Mount Sharp (officially named Aeolis Mons) in July 2013.