Mars on Earth

A narrated play-by-play of Curiosity's entry, descent, and landing on Mars!

The Curiosity engineering team created this view from images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover rear hazard avoidance cameras underneath the rover deck on Sol 0.

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

Curiosity's EDL team release a timeline for mission milestones surrounding the landing of the Mars rover.

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 ...

Large-scale crossbedding in the sandstone of this ridge on a lower slope of Mars' Mount Sharp is typical of windblown sand dunes that have petrified. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam to...

With students and NASA space shuttle astronaut Leland Melvin looking on, musical artist will.i.am posts a tweet soon after his song "Reach for the Stars" was beamed back from the Curiosity Mars rov...

NASA's Curiosity rover and its powered descent vehicle pose for photographs prior to being integrated for launch at JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility.

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon," similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit...

This chart illustrates how NASA's Curiosity rover talks to Earth. While the rover can send direct messages, it communicates more efficiently with the help of spacecraft in orbit, including NASA's O...

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, right, and Erisa Hines of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, try out the Microsoft Hololens mixed reality headset during a preview of "Destin...

This view from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows an example of discoloration closely linked to fractures in the Stimson formation sandstone on lower Mount Sharp. The pattern is evident along two p...

Guided tour of the NASA Curiosity Mars rover's flight hardware at Kennedy Space Center.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Navigation Camera (Navcam) to capture this scene toward the west just after completing a drive that took the mission's total driving distance on Mars past 10 ki...

This image from the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows detailed texture of a rock target called "Elk" on Mars' Mount Sharp, revealing laminations that ar...

Students will use satellite and rover images to learn about the various features and materials that cause color variation on the surface of Mars.

This map shows where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has driven since landing at a site subsequently named "Bradbury Landing," and traveling to an overlook position near beside "Point Lake," in drives ...

This sped-up movie from the Curiosity rover shows Phobos (the larger of Mars' two moons) passing in front of smaller Deimos. (No audio)

This sequence of seven images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows wind-caused changes in the parachute of NASA's Mars Sci...

This stereo view from NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows the downwind side of a dune about 13 feet high within the Bagnold Dunes on Mars. The image appears three-dimensional when viewed through red-...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory travels near a canyon on Mars in this artist's concept. The mission is under development for launch in 2009 and a precision landing on Mars in 2010.

A crane is attached to the first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission upon its arrival at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cap...

This scene combines images taken by the left-eye camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover during the midafternoon, local Mars solar time, of the mission's 526th...

This annotated artists' concept shows the location of all of the Curiosity rover's 17 cameras.

This mosaic of images shows layers of sediment on a boulder-sized rock called "Strathdon," as seen by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera carried by NASA's Curiosity rover. The images were tak...