Driving Over Sandy Ripples

A lunar eclipse, a solar eclipse and Mars has a close encounter with a comet.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam to take an image of this mountain, nicknamed “Rafael Navarro Mountain” after the astrobiologist Rafael Navarro-González, who worked on the mission until...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, spacecraft technicians secure an Atlas V rocket payload fairing around NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

This plot of data from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the variety of gases that were released from sand grains upon heating in the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM

This color full-resolution image showing the heat shield of NASA's Curiosity rover was obtained during descent to the surface of Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

This sequence of images shows a blast zone where the sky crane from NASA's Curiosity rover mission hit the ground after setting the rover down in August 2012, and how that dark scar's appearance ch...

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover drilled this hole to collect sample material from a rock target called "Buckskin" on July 30, 2015, about a week prior to the third anniversary of the rover's landing on...

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA's Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover Curiosity rolls out to its Space Launch Complex-41 launch pad arriving at 8:40 a.m. EST today.

This view of a Martian rock called "Rocknest 3" combines four images taken by the right-eye camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument, which has a telephoto, 100-millimeter-focal-length lens.

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the patch of rock cleaned by the first use of the rover's Dust Removal Tool (DRT).

This image shows the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on NASA's Curiosity rover, with the Martian landscape in the background.

Curiosity shakes up a scoopful of dirt, dusts off the sampling system and investigates a shiny object on the surface of Mars.

This animation shows NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying over NASA's Curiosity (shown in pink) as the rover lands on the Red Planet. The video is slowed down as the orbiter approaches the lan...

This view of a rock called "Rocknest 3" combines two images taken by the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity and indicates five spots where ChemCam had hit th...

This view of Curiosity's left-front and left-center wheels and of marks made by wheels on the ground in the "Yellowknife Bay" area comes from one of six cameras used on Mars for the first time more...

Examination of a calcium sulfate vein called "Diyogha" by the ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover found boron, sodium and chlorine. An image from the rover's Mastcam, at left, provide...

Mars is a cold desert world. It is half the size of Earth. Mars is sometimes called the Red Planet.

This image shows a dry streambed on an alluvial fan in the Atacama Desert, Chile, revealing the typical patchy, heterogeneous mixture of grain sizes deposited together.

Members of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission team photographed themselves on March 20, 2020, the first day the entire mission team worked remotely from home. 

A group watching motions of an engineering model of the camera mast for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on March 5, 2010, includes moviemaker James Cameron (right).

Teachers at the Educator Workshop listen attentively to a demonstration of Microsoft’s Kodu Mars Experience, a software program that allows students to design and create their own computer games.

NASA's Curiosity rover dusts off a rock on Mars for the first time.

This view from the Curiosity Mars rover's Mastcam shows a dark mound, called "Ireson Hill," which rises about 16 feet above redder layered outcrop material on lower Mount Sharp, Mars, near a locati...

This image illustrates the principals of a technique called "laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy," which the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument will use on Mars.

The entry, descent and landing team of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project received the 2013 Trophy for Current Achievement from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on April 24, 2013.