Mars Science Laboratory Stacked Spacecraft

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

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...

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Smaller than a penny, the flower-like rock artifact on the left was imaged by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of its robotic arm. 

Gale Crater, where the rover Curiosity of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will land in August 2012, contains a mountain rising from the crater floor.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this 360-degree panorama at a drill site nicknamed “Avanavero” on June 20, 2022, the 3,509th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In its decade on the Red Planet, t...

NASA's Curiosity rover explores Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the basin of Gale Crater on Mars. 

This wide panorama was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Dec. 19, 2019, the 2,620th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. On the righthand foreground is Western Butte; the ridge with a crusty ...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars in its approach to and April 1, 2014, arrival at a waypoint called "the Kimberley," which rover team scientists chose in 2013 as the locatio...

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...

This video, presented at four times actual speed, shows a test using an engineering model of the soil scoop for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The scoop dips to about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) dee...

By monitoring weather through two Martian years since landing in Gale Crater, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has documented seasonal patterns in variables such as temperature, water-vapor content and ...

This view combines several frames taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, looking into a valley to the west from the eastern side of a dune at the eastern end of the valley.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Curiosity rover will use a calibration target attached to a shoulder joint of the arm.

Like a human working in a radiation environment, NASA's Curiosity rover carries its own version of a dosimeter to measure radiation from outer space and the sun.

Tom Rivellini of the entry, descent and landing team gives a big thumbs up upon Curiosity's successful landing on Mars.

This movie shows the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. It was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera. (No ...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, known as Curiosity, is being prepared to be moved to a rotation fi...

At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars.

Mawrth Vallis was considered as a landing site for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.

This panorama is a mosaic of images taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity during the 106th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Nov. 22, 2012).

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...

Download a PDF of Curiosity's Pre-Landing Lithograph.

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this image of rhythmic rock layers with a repetitive pattern in their spacing and thickness. Providing yet another clue to Mars’ ancient past, the pattern might have...

Have you ever wondered how hard it is to land at a specific spot on Mars? Find out in this activity by building a device that can zip down a line and drop a "lander" onto a target.