It made headlines, TV spots, and late-night talk shows. Thousands of people watched from our Planetfest event in Pasadena, CA. Hundreds of people spontaneously gathered in Times Square in the very early morning to watch the landing. And hundreds of millions more around the world shared the experience.

Curiosity brought with it the most advanced scientific instruments ever to function on Mars. For the first time in history, x-ray diffraction and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy experiments were performed on another planet. The rover has ingested fifteen spoonfuls of martian soil and rock and analyzed its contents. It has measured the radiation environment in advance of human astronauts. It studiously recorded the weather. The rover has forged nearly eleven miles on the surface, often over unexpectedly vicious terrain, subjecting its wheels to what appears to be exotic forms of torture.

Curiosity has delivered on its primary science goals, with possibly the most important discovery being the confirmation of ancient, long-lived lakes with water good enough to drink. Some of the most exciting discoveries may be yet to come, as the rover has finally begun to climb the 5-kilometer mountain that has dominated its horizon since day one: Mt. Sharp. There Curiosity can work its way up the stratigraphic rock record, looking at billions of years of preserved history of Mars.

And even though Curiosity's immense success did not help the Mars program's budget, or even the budget of NASA's Planetary Science Division, it did help the cause of its follow-on mission, the as-yet unnamed Mars 2020 rover. The new rover will take the first step in a multi-mission effort to return samples from Mars to the Earth. Notably, it will utilize the Curiosity chassis and other major flight elements, including the breathtaking but now demonstrably successful sky crane landing system.