Desolate Landscape

This closeup view from NASA's Curiosity rover shows finely layered rocks, deposited by wind long ago as migrating sand dunes.

This map shows in red the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from its landing site at "Bradbury Landing" through the mission's 663rd Martian day, or sol (June 18, 2014). The white line sho...

This view shows grains of sand where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover was driven into a shallow sand sheet near a large dune. The scene covers an area 1.3 inches wide, imaged by Curiosity's Mars Hand Le...

Onlookers watch as Scarecrow, a mobility-testing model for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, easily conquers boulders in the Mars Yard testing area at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Filled with briny lakes, the Quisquiro salt flat in South America's Altiplano represents the kind of landscape that scientists think may have existed in Gale Crater, which NASA's Curiosity rover is...

Curiosity prepares for a second drilling and a tutorial on the complicated choreography to get the drill sample to her instruments.

This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks down the ramp at the northeastern end of "Hidden Valley" and across the sandy-floored valley to lower slopes of Mount Sharp on the horizon.

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

This scene was captured by Curiosity on Sept. 9, 2015, when NASA’s Mars rover was many miles from its current location.

Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, became the project scientist for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project in January 2015.

Scientist Katie Stack Morgan examines rover images on her computer. Images, even 3-D stereo views, lack a natural sense of depth that human vision employs to understand spatial relationships.

This map traces where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove between landing at a site subsequently named "Bradbury Landing," and the position reached during the mission's 130th Martian day, or sol, (De...

This artist's scoreboard displays a fictional game between Mars and Earth, with Mars in the lead. It refers to the success rate of sending missions to Mars, both as orbiters and landers.

Checking Contact Points for Curiosity's Drill

This patch of bedrock, called "Cumberland," has been selected as the second target for drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover fired its laser 50 times at its onboard graphite target during the 27th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars...

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 wide view of the 'John Klein' location selected for the first rock drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is a mosaic taken by Curiosity's right Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the afternoon of ...

In a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay," the NASA Mars rover Curiosity drove to an edge of the feature during the 130th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Dec. 17, 2012) and used its Nav...

The feature that appears bright blue at the center of this scene is NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, viewed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Curiosity is ...

This exposure of finely laminated bedrock on Mars includes tiny crystal-shaped bumps, plus mineral veins with both bright and dark material. This rock target, called "Jura," was imaged by the MAHLI...

This image of the northwestern portion of Mars' Gale Crater and terrain north of it, from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, provides a locator map for some features visible in an Oc...

In the clean room at JPL, engineers gather around the base of Curiosity's "neck" (the Mast) as they slowly lower it into place for attachment to the rover’s "body" (the Wet Electronics Box, or "WEB").

This image is from a test series used to characterize the 100-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 image taken by NASA's Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover -- its main science target, Mount Sharp.