Mars on Earth

Between 2006 and 2011, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., conducted a series of aerial tests on the radar that will be used to land NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars....

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

The "Shaler" outcrop is dramatically layered, as seen in this mosaic of telephoto images from the right Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover looks south of the rover's landing site on Mars towards Mount Sharp.

This detailed panorama from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a view toward two areas on lower Mount Sharp chosen for close-up inspection: "Mount Shields" and "Logan Pa...

Students decide what they want to learn from a robotic mission to Mars.

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

Scientists have now named the four marks near NASA's Curiosity rover where blasts from the descent stage rocket engines blew away some of the Martian surface material.

This is an artist's concept of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover parachute system.

This artist's concept depicts the moment immediately after NASA's Curiosity rover touches down onto the Martian surface.

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...

A group of teachers discusses solutions to a problem-solving activity at the Aug. 5, 2012, Curiosity Educator Workshop at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

This video steps viewers through a portion of the choreography needed to land NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. It starts with a computer simulation from NASA's Eyes on the Solar System program and ...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) to take the images combined into this mosaic of the drill area, called "John Klein."

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.

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

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...

Processes in Mars' surface material can explain why particular xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr) isotopes are more abundant in the Martian atmosphere than expected, as measured by NASA's Curiosity rover....

This wide-angle view shows the High Bay 1 cleanroom inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Specialists are working on components of the Mars S...

This 360-degree panorama shows the "Marias Pass" area, at center, and part of the slope that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover climbed to get there, at right.

This image shows part of the small pit or bite created when NASA's Mars rover Curiosity collected its second scoop of Martian soil at a sandy patch called "Rocknest."

This hole, with a diameter slightly smaller than a U.S. dime, was drilled by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover into a rock target called "Telegraph Peak." The rock is located within the basal layer of Mo...

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

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powdered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis.

The NASA Mars rover Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the mission's 120th Martian day, or sol (Dec. 7, 2012), to record this view of a rock outcrop informally named "Shaler."