Gale Crater

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...

In this project, you'll do an experiment to explore the science behind a mystery that puzzled scientists for years. Read on to play the part of a NASA scientist and learn about what's creating brig...

This picture shows the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer used on the Mars Exploration Rovers. The improved APXS instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory rover would be able to detect elemental com...

Building Curiosity: Engineers give the rover lessons in hand-eye coordination.

One type of feature of scientific interest on the mountain inside Gale crater is exposure of cemented fractures, evidence that groundwater once reached to at least that height of the mountain.

Curiosity's DAN instrument for checking hydration levels in the ground beneath the rover detected an unusually high amount at a site near "Marias Pass," prompting repeated passes over the area to m...

The distant blob seen in the view on left, taken by a Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover, may be a cloud created during the crash of the rover's descent stage. Pictures taken about 4...

NASA’s Curiosity rover recently made its most challenging climb on Mars. Curiosity faced a steep, slippery slope on its journey up Mount Sharp, so rover drivers had to come up with a creative detou...

Sandstone layers with varying resistance to erosion are evident in this Martian scene recorded by the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Feb. 25, 2014, about one-quarter mile (about 400 ...

This stereo mosaic of images from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the terrain to the west from the rover's position on the 528th Martian day, or sol, of the miss...

Engineers test the rover’s driving skills on soft sand ripples in this latest desert-driving trip on June 5, 2014, in the Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert, near Death Valley.

NASA’s Curiosity used its Mastcam to capture this impact crater in a location nicknamed “Jau” on July 25, the 3,899th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This was one of dozens of impact craters C...

Five years of Martian discoveries after seven minutes of terror.

These two views from NASA’s Curiosity rover, acquired specifically to measure the amount of dust inside Gale Crater, show that dust has increased over three days from a major Martian dust storm.

The network of cracks in this Martian rock slab called "Old Soaker" may have formed from the drying of a mud layer more than 3 billion years ago. The view spans about 3 feet (90 centimeters) left-t...

Two 2001 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance during a dust storm.

A NASA radio on Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter, which reached Mars in October 2016, has succeeded in its first test of receiving data from NASA Mars rovers, both Opportunity and Curiosity. This grap...

Emily Eelkema Stough, Tactical Uplink Lead and Jessica Samuels, Engineering Operations Team Chief, pose for the cameras in the "Mars Yard" with Curiosity's ground test model in the background.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 561st Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (March 5, 2014).

This view taken from orbit around Mars shows the sand dune that will be the first to be visited by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover along its route to higher layers of Mount Sharp.

Filled with briny lakes, the Quisquiro salt flat in South America's Altiplano represents the kind of landscape that scientists think may have existed in Gale Crater, which NASA's Curiosity rover is...

This view southeastward from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) shows terrain judged difficult for traversing between the rover and an outcrop in the middle distance where a pale rock unit meets a d...

The yellow triangles on this graph indicate concentrations of the elements titanium and silicon in selected rock targets with high silica content analyzed by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Navigation Camera (Navcam) to record this stereo scene of a butte called "Mount Remarkable" and surrounding outcrops at a waypoint called "the Kimberley" inside...

Two spacecraft engineers stand with a group of vehicles providing a comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The setting is JPL...