Countdown Nears: Final Tests

Wind is one of the most active forces shaping Mars’ surface in today’s climate. Wind-carved features such as these, called “yardangs,” are common on the Red Planet.

This impact crater has gullies incised into its walls on the north and eastern sides. A couple of gullies on the north wall are unusual because a segment in the middle becomes wider than the upslop...

A comparison of two radargrams from the SHARAD instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows effects on the Martian ionosphere from the close passage of a comet.

A region known as "Cape York" on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity worked for 20 months, is highlighted in these images.

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, working on Mars since January 2004, passed marathon distance in total driving on March 24, 2015. This map shows the rover's entire traverse from landing to that point.

This image, taken Jan. 26, 2012, shows the back shell of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft after its second Martian arctic winter.

This image shows details of the lava covered plains near the equator of Mars. The darker looking area has a rough lava surface with all the shadows giving the region a darker appearance.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity left the "Glenelg" area on July 4, 2013, on a "rapid transit route" to the entry point for the mission's next major destination, the lower layers of Mount Sharp.

This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Re...

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

In early 2017, after more than a decade of observing Mars, the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) surpassed 99 percent coverage of the entire planet. This mosaic shows that...

This movie begins with an animation (artist's rendering) of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft above Mars. The scene zooms into an "X-ray" view of the spacecraft, revealing the High Reso...

A digital terrain model generated from a stereo pair of images provides this synthesized, oblique view of a portion of the wall terraces of Mojave Crater in the Xanthe Terra region of Mars.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows sand dunes on the slopes of Nectaris Montes within Coprates Chasma.

This Oct. 25, 2016, image from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the area where the Europe's Schiaparelli test lander struck Mars, with magnified insets of three sites w...

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

This image is of a portion of the Southern plains region within Hellas, the largest impact basin on Mars, with a diameter of about 2300 kilometers (1400 miles).

This colorful image acquired on May 21, 2018 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows clays within the Eridania basin region. A large lake may have once existed here.

The red line on this map shows where NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity has driven from the place where it landed in January 2004 -- inside Eagle Crater, at the upper left end of the track -- to where i...

This image shows the transitional terrain where the linear troughs and rounded pits of an area called "Noctis Labyrinthus" merge with the larger canyon of "Valles Marineris." Unusual bright blocks ...

A variety of landforms, including isolated hills, eroded mesas, dark eroded sediments, and dunes are seen within an area called "Aram Chaos."

This image acquired on December 11, 2018 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a surface texture of interconnected ridges and troughs, referred to as brain terrain, found throughout the mid-l...

Overview map showing the location of the study area within Aeolis Dorsa (star).

From one side of the country to the other, through a snowstorm and other delays, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter made its way to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final processing and rehearsals ...

Crater Floor Deposits in Promethei Terra