Gale Crater

NASA's Curiosity rover delivers its first soil sample to its chemistry and mineralogy instrument.

This early-morning view from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on March 16, 2016, covers a portion of the inner wall of Gale Crater. At right, the image fades into glare of the rising sun....

At the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the "back shell powered descent vehicle" configuration of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is being rotated for ...

Dr. John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, 3rd from left, meets with members of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory team on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013, at the Eisenhower Ex...

So, you want to study Mars with a lander or rover - but where exactly do you send it? Learn how scientists and engineers tackle this question in this 60-second video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Labo...

Mawrth Vallis

This artist's concept shows the sky crane maneuver during the descent of NASA's Curiosity rover to the Martian surface.

Close-up of Curiosity's Landing Region

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in July 2017 (Sol 1750), and its planned path to additional geologic...

Light-toned nodules and veins are visible in this image from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity of a patch of sedimentary rock called "Knorr."

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).

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft has been fully stacked for flight in this photograph from inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA Kennedy Space Center, Fla., in October 2011.

Holden Crater

Goal 4: Prepare for human exploration

NASA's Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Martian surface between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019.

This animation shows the major mission events of the Curiosity rover's landing on Mars. (Audio: music and mechanical sounds only)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Navigation Camera (Navcam) to capture this view on April 11, 2015, during the 952nd Martian day, or sol of the rover's work on Mars. The image appears three-dim...

Decades of work preparing a miniaturized laboratory for identifying minerals on Mars have also yielded spinoff versions with diverse applications on Earth and, possibly, the moon.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover can be seen in this image taken from space on May 31, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In the image, Curiosity appears as a bluish speck.

This pair of graphs shows about one-fourth of a Martian year's record of temperatures (in degrees Celsius) measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover.

Musician will.i.am addresses a crowd of students at JPL during an event celebrating the first time in history that a recorded song has been beamed back to Earth from another planet.

The right Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover provided this view of the lower stratigraphy at "Yellowknife Bay" inside Gale Crater on Mars.

This false-color image shows how special filters of the Curiosity Mars rover's Mastcam can help reveal certain minerals in target rocks. It is a composite of images taken Sept. 17, 2017, through th...

This plot of data from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the variety of gases that were released from sand grains upon heating in the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM

The goosebump-like features in the center of this image were formed by water billions of years ago. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover discovered them as it crested the slope of "Greenheugh Pediment" on F...