Driving Over Sandy Ripples

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 56th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Oct. 2, 2012).

This panorama, made up of 122 individual images stitched together, was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Nov. 18, 2020, the 2,946th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. 

This global map of Mars was acquired on Aug. 2, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately ...

This graphic maps locations of the sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected its first 18 rock or soil samples for laboratory analysis inside the vehicle. It also presents images of the dri...

This is a still from an interactive web feature that guides you through the entry, descent and landing of NASA's Curiosity rover.

Testing of Mars Landing Radar near Lancaster, Calif.

Technicians and engineers in clean-room garb monitor the first drive test of NASA's Curiosity rover, on July 23, 2010.

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a network of two-tone mineral veins at an area called "Garden City" on lower Mount Sharp.

A wheel track left by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover exposes underlying material in a shallow sand sheet in this Dec. 2, 2015, view from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam). The site is close to a large...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled into this rock target, "Cumberland," during the 279th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (May 19, 2013) and collected a powdered sample of material...

This video shows an engineering test for NASA's Curiosity rover, which took place during Assembly, Test and Launch Operations (ATLO), a project phase that occurs when all components are integrated,...

See the steep slopes, layered buttes, and dark rocks surrounding Curiosity while it was parked below Gediz Vallis Ridge, which formed as a result of violent debris flows that were later eroded by w...

All these signs of water are very exciting. Why? Because on Earth, almost everywhere there is water, there is life.

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...

“Selfie” of the Curiosity rover with inset showing the SAM instrument prior to installation on the rover. 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover examined both the "Greenhorn" and "Big Sky" targets with the rover's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument. Greenhorn is located within an altered fracture...

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

This engineering drawing shows the five devices that make up the turret at the end of the arm on NASA's Curiosity rover.

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...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 43rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Sept. 19, 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 set of drawings depicts cross sections of the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater at three points in time going back more than 80 million years (>80 Ma).

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

JPL researchers Jessica Creamer, Fernanda Mora and Peter Willis (left to right) pose with the Chemical Laptop, a device designed to detect amino acids and fatty acids. At left is a near-identical c...