Gale Crater

The suspension system on NASA Mars rover Curiosity easily accommodates rolling over a ramp in this Sept. 10, 2010, test drive inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labora...

Parachute Opening During Tests for Mars Science Laboratory

NASA's Curiosity rover takes a short breather on her trek to Glenelg to check out her arm instruments.

Landing a spacecraft on Mars is one of the trickiest things we do. This 60-second video explains how it's done, and the three landing systems we use at the Red Planet.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover set out to answer a big question when it landed on the Red Planet 10 years ago: Could Mars have supported ancient life? Scientists have discovered the answer is yes and ...

In this picture, the rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of the rover's arm, which extends about 7 feet (2 meters).

A chapter of the layered geological history of Mars is laid bare in this postcard from NASA's Curiosity rover. The image shows the base of Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual science destination.

This image is from a test series used to characterize the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012, and looks south-southwest from the rover's landing site.

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians work beneath NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission aeroshell, (containing the compact car-s...

This is the right-eye member of a stereo pair of images of the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, Curiosity.

Patches of Martian sandstone visible in the lower-left and upper portions of this view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover have a knobbly texture due to nodules apparently...

The graph at right presents information from the NASA Curiosity Mars rover's onboard analysis of rock powder drilled from the "Big Sky" and "Greenhorn" target locations, shown at left.

This animation of NASA's Curiosity rover shows the complicated suite of operations involved in conducting the rover's first rock sample drilling on Mars and transferring the sample to the rover's s...

This stereo view from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a 360-degree panorama around the location where the rover spent its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, on Mars. T...

This image was taken inside a large 'clean room,' where ATLO (Assembly, Testing, and Launch Operations) is taking place for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. In the foreground on the right are e...

This graph shows the ratio of concentrations of several elements in four different pairs of targets examined by Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instruments on NASA Mars rovers Curiosity an...

This cutaway view shows the internal chambers of the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device, attached to the turret at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Curios...

Curiosity will have to survive the extreme temperatures of Mars. Is the rover ready? Engineers put it through thermal tests to find out.

Members of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory team carefully steer the hoisted Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument during its June 15, 2010, installation into the mission's Mars rover, Curiosity.

With students and NASA space shuttle astronaut Leland Melvin looking on, musical artist will.i.am posts a tweet soon after his song "Reach for the Stars" was beamed back from the Curiosity Mars rov...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used a new drill method to produce a hole on February 26 in a target named Lake Orcadie. The hole marks the first operation of the rover's drill since a motor problem be...

Interact with this 3D model of the Curiosity Rover.

This view of Curiosity's deck shows a plaque bearing several signatures of US officials, including that of President Obama and Vice President Biden.

This panorama of the landscape surrounding NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on July 31, 2014, offers a view into sandy lower terrain called "Hidden Valley," which is on the planned route ahead.

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 (...