Dunes Obstacle Course

This small ridge, about 3 feet long, appears to resist wind erosion more than the flatter plates around it. Such differences are among the traits NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is examining at selecte...

On Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the payload fairing protecting NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) stands atop the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, which is rea...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians guide the backshell as it is lowered over NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, Curiosity, f...

This set of images compares the Link outcrop of rocks on Mars (left) with similar rocks seen on Earth (right).

This diagram shows the location of each of the Curiosity Rover's ten science instruments.

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....

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.

This full-resolution self-portrait shows the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover from the rover's Navigation cameras.

A rippled linear dune of dark Martian sand, "Nathan Bridges Dune," dominates this full-circle panorama from the Mastcam of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. This dune was one research stop of the missio...

What’s the latest news from Mars? NASA’s InSight lander and MarCO CubeSats are on their way to the Red Planet, a tiny helicopter will hitch a ride with the Mars 2020 rover mission, and Curiosity’s ...

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of a rock called "Et-Then" during the mission's 82nd sol, or Martian day (Oct. 29, 2012.)

This oblique, southward-looking view of Gale crater shows the landing site and the mound of layered rocks that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will investigate.

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its laser and spectrometers to examine what chemical elements are in a drift of Martian sand during the mission's 7...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used a mechanism on its robotic arm to dig up five scoopfuls of material from a patch of dusty sand called "Rocknest," producing the five bite-mark pits visible in this ...

The dark, golf-ball-size object in this composite, colorized view from the ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is a nickel-iron meteorite, as confirmed by analysis using laser pulses...

This image shows the calibration target for the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover.

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover covers an area in "Bridger Basin" that includes the locations where the rover drilled a target called "Big Sky" on the missio...

Wispy clouds float across the Martian sky in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images taken on July 17, 2017, by the Navcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

Out of more than 30 sites considered as possible landing targets for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, by November 2008 four of the most intriguing places on Mars rose to the final round of t...

At the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the "back shell powered descent vehicle" configuration, containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curio...

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.

An eruption from the surface of the sun is conspicuous in the lower left portion of this July 6, 2015, image from NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. It originates from a location on ...

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

This image is from a series of test images to calibrate the 34-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.

As of June 2012, the target landing area for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission is the ellipse marked on this image of Gale Crater.