Just landing successfully on Mars is a feat, but the Curiosity mission went several steps further on Aug. 5, 2012, touching down with a bold new technique: the sky crane maneuver. A swooping ...

In its search for life beyond Earth, NASA employs a "sky crane" maneuver to land the Curiosity rover on Mars. (Program not available for streaming.) Why go back to Mars? Far from dead ...

NASA's mission to return samples from Mars and potentially discover the first signs of alien life has a new timeline. The samples may arrive sooner.

NASA had briefly considered a similar sky crane system (dubbed “rover on a rope”) for the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission, but had shelved the idea because a tethered vehicle would have to ...