A rover is a space exploration vehicle designed to move across the surface of a planet or other celestial body. Some rovers have been designed to transport members of a human spaceflight crew; others have been partially or fully autonomous robots. Rovers usually arrive at the planetary surface on a lander-style spacecraft.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity was launched to Mars in late 2011 and landed in the Red Planet in early August of 2012. The main objective of the MSL mission is to "assess habitability" of both Mars' past and present environments. The rover landed in Gale crater in order to study the potential habitability of the ancient environments recorded there by local rock outcroppings.
