Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

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...

The rock layers in this image were likely horizontal when the materials were first deposited, but are now tilted to high angles, approaching 90 degrees.

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Two dark, rimless pits are located to the northwest of Ascraeus Mons in the Tharsis volcanic region of Mars.

This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta, the material thrown out of the crater when a meteorite hit Mars.

This global map of Mars was acquired on Aug. 2, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This image, taken with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, shows the transition between the "Murray Formation," in which layers are poorly expressed and difficult to tra...

A large dust storm on Mars, nearly twice the size of the United States, covered the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet in early January 2022, leading to some of NASA’s explorers on the surface h...

NASA's Opportunity rover appears as a blip in the center of this square. This image taken by HiRISE, a high-resolution camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the dust storm over P...

This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today.

NASA's spacecraft on Mars are all affected by the winds of the Red Planet, which can produce a tiny dust devil or a global dust storm. 

The upper portion of this map is from an observation by the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of a field of dark sand dunes in the Nili Patera region of Mars.

This sequence of images shows a blast zone where the sky crane from NASA's Curiosity rover mission hit the ground after setting the rover down in August 2012, and how that dark scar's appearance ch...

This image acquired on January 21, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the south polar layered deposits are well illuminated to accentuate the topography.

This enhanced-color image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater in Noachis Terra, Mars.

This nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012, shows a dust storm in Mars' southern hemisphere.

Mars' north polar deposits comprise a thick stack of icy layers. Part of this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has lingering seasonal frost, which serves to accentuate those laye...

A rippled dune front in Herschel Crater on Mars moved an average of about two meters (about two yards) between March 3, 2007 and December 1, 2010, as seen in these images from NASA's Mars Reconnais...

Mysterious features on slopes hint there could be water flows on Mars.

Follow along on a tour of the landing scene of NASA's Curiosity rover in this video made up of images from two NASA orbiters. The movie begins with a global image from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, ...

This false-color animation simulates a fly-around look at one of the places on Mars where dark streaks advance down slopes during warm seasons, possibly involving liquid water or brine. This site i...

This image acquired on January 23, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the western portion of a well-preserved (recent) impact crater in Ladon Basin.

Artist's concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter near Mars.

At the center of this view of an area of mid-latitude northern Mars, a fresh crater about 6 meters (20 feet) in diameter holds an exposure of bright material, blue in this false-color image.

This image maps the traverse of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity from "Bradbury Landing" to "Yellowknife Bay," with an inset documenting a change in the ground's thermal properties with arrival at a dif...