Storm Chaser on Mars

With the spacecraft safely captured into orbit, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team transitions to the next critical phase -- aerobraking. Learn how engineers slow the spacecraft and precisely sha...

Download a PDF of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Launch Press Kit.

The white arrows indicate locations in this scene where numerous seasonal dark streaks, called "recurring slope lineae," have been identified in the Coprates Montes area of Mars' Valles Marineris b...

This kickoff of a new Mars video series covers Opportunity's 14th anniversary on the Red Planet, Curiosity's spectacular panorama and ice deposits spotted by an orbiter.

This view combines information from two instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map color-coded composition over the shape of the ground in a small portion of the Nili Fossae plains re...

Impact cratering and erosion combine to reveal the composition of the Martian underground by exposing materials from the subsurface.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has clocked more than a decade of service at the Red Planet and has yielded scientific discoveries and magnificent views of a distant world. These images taken by...

Polygons are of great interest because they often indicate the presence of shallow ice or of desiccation such as in a mud flat. However, nature sometimes seems too clever for us.

Boulder-size blocks of water ice can be seen around the rim of an impact crater on Mars, as viewed by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE camera) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissanc...

This movie clip shows a global map of Mars with atmospheric changes from Feb. 18, 2017, through March 6, 2017, a period when two regional-scale dust storms appeared. It combines hundreds of images ...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars in its approach to and April 1, 2014, arrival at a waypoint called "the Kimberley," which rover team scientists chose in 2013 as the locatio...

Seasons change even on Mars and NASA's fleet of explorers are helping scientists learn more about the effects on the Red Planet.

This HiRISE image shows diverse layers in a region near Mawrth Vallis, a channel that was probably carved by water in Mars' ancient past. The color subimage shows details of layers exposed in a cra...

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, its backshell and its heatshield are visible within this enhanced-color image of the Phoenix landing site taken on Jan. 6, 2010 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Ex...

This image acquired on September 18, 2018 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows araneiform terrain (colloquially: spider-like terrain) located in the south polar region of Mars.

This artist's concept shows NASA's Mars orbiters lining up behind the Red Planet for their "duck and cover" maneuver to shield them fro comet dust that may result from the close flyby of comet Sidi...

Cydonia Labyrinthus is a complex of intersecting valleys that form a polygonal fractured terrain.

Tantalus Fossae are a set of faults on the eastern flank of Alba Mons, one of the great Tharsis Montes volcanoes. Here a fault cuts into this crater, indicating that the fault formed after the crat...

Candor Chasma is one of the major canyons within Valles Marineris. The floor of this canyon consist of many layers of light-toned sediments that have been folded and faulted, giving them the wavy a...

Phobos from 5,800 Kilometers

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took this photo of the Curiosity rover in September 2015, as Curiosity was exploring the boundary between two rock units: the light-toned Murray Formation and the ov...

The bright linear features cutting the bedrock in the center region of this image look like mineral veins.

Artist rendering of commercial Mars satellites providing communications back to Earth.

This illustration depicts a concept for the possible extent of an ancient lake inside Gale Crater.

The eastern margin of a rippled dune in Herschel Crater on Mars moved an average distance of three meters (about three yards) between March 3, 2007 and December 1, 2010, as seen by NASA's Mars Reco...