Scarecrow Rover Desert Tests

Pictured here is Clara Ma (in front row on the right) and her sister Remmy Ma with engineers Suparna Mukherjee, Jaime Waydo and then Julie Towsend (back row).

This graphic depicts paths by which carbon has been exchanged among Martian interior, surface rocks, polar caps, waters and atmosphere, and also depicts a mechanism by which it is lost from the atm...

A view from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on April 8, 2015, catches sight of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover passing through a valley called "Artist's Drive" on the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

Cross-bedding seen in the layers of this Martian rock is evidence of movement of water recorded by waves or ripples of loose sediment the water passed over.

This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

This image, taken with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, shows the transition between the "Murray Formation," in which layers are poorly expressed and difficult to tra...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity captured this view using its Navigation Camera (Navcam) after reaching the top of a rise called "Panorama Point" with a drive during the 388th Martian day, or sol, of th...

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.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover completed a shallow "mini drill" test April 29, 2014, in preparation for full-depth drilling at a rock target called "Windjana." This image from Curiosity's Mars Hand Le...

A test operator in clean-room garb holds umbilical cables for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity during the rover's first drive test, on July 23, 2010.

This view from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover spans 360 degrees, centered southward toward a planned science waypoint at "the Kimberley," with an outcrop of eroded sandstone in the foreground. It comb...

The leader of the entry, descent and landing team of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project, Adam Steltzner of JPL (left), accepts the 2013 Trophy for Current Achievement from the Smithsonian Natio...

Color coding in this image of Mars represents differences in elevation, measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from where it landed in 2012 to its location in early March 2016, approaching 'Naukluft Plateau.' As the rover continues up Mount Shar...

The plot on the left shows new results from the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover.

This image taken by NASA's Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover -- its main science target, Mount Sharp.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie on May 12, 2019 (the 2,405th Martian day, or sol, of the mission). To the lower-left of the rover are its two recent drill holes, at targets called "Abe...

Looking Back at the Crater Rim

Access Mars allows any member of the public to explore the discoveries of NASA's Curiosity rover.

A mineral vein with bright and dark portions dominates this image of a Martian rock target called "Rona," which is near the southern, upper edge of "Vera Rubin Ridge" on Mount Sharp.

The top of the butte in this Sept. 1, 2016, scene from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover stands about 16 feet above the rover and about 82 feet east-southeast of the rover. T...

This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera.

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 (...

This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This May 22, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the "Marias Pass" area where a lower and older geological unit of mudstone -- the pale zone in the center...