Gale Crater

Technicians, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, use an overhead crane to move a rocket-powered descent stage for integration with NASA's Mars Sci...

As of June 2012, the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, is the ellipse marked on this image. The ellipse is about 12 miles long and 4 miles wide...

Curiosity rover obtains the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet.

This mosaic shows various scenes captured from a location called "Housedon Hill" by the ChemCam instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover between September 9 and October 23, 2020 (Sols 2878 and...

Sensors on two finger-like mini-booms extending horizontally from the mast of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will monitor wind speed, wind direction and air temperature.

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...

This image from July 2008 shows the aeroshell for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory while it was being worked on by spacecraft technicians at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company near Denver.

This image shows the first holes drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity at Mount Sharp.

Chile's Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth -- and a ready analog for Mars' rugged, arid terrain.

Scarecrow is a full-scale version of Curiosity, but without the “brains.” Engineers use it to test drive on different types of terrain. In this image, the rover was taken out to the Dumont Dunes in...

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Ha...

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity rover is carried at an angle when the rover's arm is stowed for driving.

This cut-out from a color panorama image taken by NASA's Curiosity rover shows the effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground.

The left-front wheel of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows dents and holes in this image taken during the 469th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Nov. 30, 2013).

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the location where it landed in August 2012 to the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp.

This view of "Vera Rubin Ridge" from the ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows sedimentary layers, mineral veins and effects of wind erosion. ChemCam's telescopic Remote Micro-Ima...

NASA's NEOWISE mission detected comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on July 28, 2014, less than three months before this comet's close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19. This merging of multiple images presents t...

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

This image shows fine sand from Mars that was filtered by NASA's Curiosity rover as part of its first "decontamination" exercise.

With NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft sealed inside its payload fairing, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rides smoke and flames as it rises from the launch pad at Space Lau...

This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012.

This Dec. 17, 2015, view combines multiple images from the telephoto-lens camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover to reveal fine details of the downwind face of "Namib Du...

This is one of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT).

A dust storm continues to envelop the Red Planet and Curiosity’s labs are back in action.

This set of images shows the movement of the rear right wheel of NASA's Curiosity as rover drivers turned the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars.