Driving Over Sandy Ripples

View the video 'Mars Rover Gets the Drill'

The Entry, Descent and Landing team celebrate just moments after news that Curiosity landed safely on Mars.

This stereo view from the Curiosity Mars rover's Navcam shows a 360-degree panorama around the site where the rover spent its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, on Mars. The image appears three-dimension...

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...

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...

The left eye of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the camera on the rover's arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), during the 30th Martian day, or sol, of...

Stitched together from 28 images, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view from "Greenheugh Pediment" on April 9, 2020, the 2,729th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In the foreground is t...

In this image from NASA's Curiosity rover, a rock outcrop called Link pops out from a Martian surface that is elsewhere blanketed by reddish-brown dust. The fractured Link outcrop has blocks of exp...

This oblique, southward-looking view of Gale crater shows the mound of layered rocks that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will investigate. The mission's selected landing site is just north of the m...

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.

Gale Crater

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 126 individual images that make up this 360-degree panorama on March 3, 2021, the 3,048th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

A viewpoint on "Vera Rubin Ridge" provided NASA's Curiosity Mars rover this detailed look back over the area where it began its mission inside Gale Crater, plus more-distant features of the crater....

The Russian-made instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity for detecting water that is adsorbed into soil or bound into shallow underground minerals has fired its 2 millionth pulse of energetic neu...

As the Curiosity rover hurdles toward Mars on the last leg of its journey, the Mars Science Laboratory Mission Operations Team assemble in Mission Control at the Space Flight Operations Facility at...

This mosaic of images shows a boulder-sized rock called "Strathdon," which is made up of many complex layers. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took these images using its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on Jul...

The Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this set of images before and after it drilled a rock nicknamed "Aberlady." The rock and others nearby appear to have moved when...

This view of the two moons of Mars comes from a set of images taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity as the larger moon, Phobos, passed in front of the smaller one, Deimos, from Curiosity's perspecti...

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 shows engineer Sean Haggert. Wearing a white lab coat, gloves, face mask, and hair covering to protect spacecraft parts from contamination, engineer Sean Haggert places his hands on eith...

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, largest of the 10 science instruments for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will examine samples of Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere for inform...

This pair of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity rover illustrates how special filters are used to scout terrain ahead for variations in the local bedrock.

Two 2001 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance during a dust storm.

Concretions at 'Cumberland'

This artist's concept shows how the cruise stage de-spins outside the martian atmosphere, turns to entry position, suffers peak heating just after entry, then peak deceleration, before deploying a ...