Dr. Phil Varghese

This artist's animation shows how orbiters over Mars will monitor the landing of NASA's Curiosity rover. (No audio)

This mosaic image of Valles Marineris - colored to resemble the martian surface - comes from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), a visible-light and infrared-sensing camera on NASA's Mars...

If a meteorite breaks in two shortly before hitting the ground, the typical bowl shape of a single impact crater becomes doubled.

Spider Web Pattern

This image captured by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft shows a section of Nanedi Valles, located in Xanthe Terra.

Valles Marineris, the "Grand Canyon of Mars," sprawls wide enough to reach from Los Angeles to nearly New York City, if it were located on Earth. The red outline box shows the location of a second,...

Although this may look like a hostile alien life form, it's actually a complex line of sand dunes near the northern ice cap of Mars.

Mars is experiencing large regional dust storms over its northern hemisphere during the past week.

On the southwest edge of the immense volcanic region of Tharsis, lava from its giant volcanoes flowed down to meet the old cratered landscape of Terra Sirenum.

Hills abound in this portion of Mars located in the Vastitas Borealis region of the high northern plains. These hills are part of Scandia Colles. Note that some of the hills have aprons surrounding...

This image shows a 90-mile-wide portion of the giant Valles Marineris canyon system. Landslide debris and gullies in the canyon walls on Mars can be seen at 100 meters (330 feet) per pixel.

Ninth-grade, high-school students from Peoria, AZ analyze images of Mars.

The dunes and dust devil tracks in this VIS image are located on the plains of Planum Chronium.

The artist's animation depicts how NASA's Curiosity rover will communicate with Earth during landing. As the rover descends to Mars, it will send out basic radio-frequency tones that go directly to...

The floor of this crater in Terra Sirenum contains layered material. The layered sedimentary material on Mars is arguably the most interesting and compelling material on the planet. These layers mo...

Six views of the Martian moon Phobos captured by NASA's Odyssey orbiter as of March 2020. The orbiter's THEMIS camera is used to measure temperature variations that suggest what kind of material th...

The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an unprecedented full decade of observing Mars from orbit.

At the time this video was released, the Odyssey team had successfully completed the third trajectory correction maneuver to adjust the spacecraft's flightpath toward its final aimpoint for entry i...

Snow falls and ice and frost form on Mars, too. NASA's spacecraft on and orbiting the Red Planet reveal the similarities to and differences from how we experience winter on Earth.  

Fans and ribbons of dark sand dunes creep across the floor of Bunge Crater in response to winds blowing from the direction at the top of the picture. The frame is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) wide.

A group of small, unnamed craters in the martian southern hemisphere is the first site captured by a group of middle school students who are operating the camera system onboard NASA's Mars Odyssey ...

A lunar eclipse, a solar eclipse and Mars has a close encounter with a comet.

This image is near the southern edge of a low, broad volcanic feature called Syrtis Major.

Martian surface frost, made up largely of carbon dioxide, appears blueish-white in these images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera aboard NASA’s 2001 Odyssey orbiter. THEMIS t...

A small basin (center foreground) lies below the southern rim of Melas Chasma, part of Valles Marineris.