Valleys much younger than well-known ancient valley networks on Mars are evident near the informally named "Heart Lake" on Mars. This map presents color-coded topographical information overlaid onto a photo mosaic. Lower elevations are indicated with white and purple; higher elevations, yellow.
At 11:02 a.m. EDT on April 7, 2001, crowds watch a Boeing Delta II rocket lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, carrying NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft into space on its seven-month journey to Mars.
Morning clouds fill Coprates Chasma on Mars in this Nov. 25, 2015, image from the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey. No orbiter systematically observed Mars in morning sunlight before 2015. The clouds appear blue because ice particles in them scatter blue light more strongly than other colors.
Buzz Aldrin, an Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon, makes a holographic appearance in 'Destination: Mars,' a mixed-reality tour of a part of Mars that NASA's Curiosity rover has explored.
This map shows unprecedented detail of local variations in Mars' gravitational pull on orbiters. The gravitational mapping has been applied to map variations in the thickness of the planet's crust and to deduce information about its deeper interior.
Newly detailed mapping of local variations in Mars' gravitational pull on orbiters (center), combined with topographical mapping of the planet's mountains and valleys (left), yields the best-yet mapping of Mars' crustal thickness (right).
Women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pose for a photo in mission control in honor of Women in Science Day.
This view combines information from two instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map color-coded composition over the shape of the ground in a small portion of the Nili Fossae plains region of Mars' northern hemisphere.
Researchers estimating the amount of carbon held in the ground at the largest known carbonate-containing deposit on Mars utilized data from three different NASA Mars orbiters.
Researchers estimating the amount of carbon held in the ground at the largest known carbonate-containing deposit on Mars utilized data from three different NASA Mars orbiters.
Gale Crater, home to NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, shows a new face in this image made using data from the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
Seen shortly after local Martian sunrise, clouds gather in the summit pit, or caldera, of Pavonis Mons, a giant volcano on Mars, in this image from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
This graphic depicts the relative shapes and distances from Mars for five active orbiter missions plus the planet's two natural satellites. It illustrates the potential for intersections of the spacecraft orbits.
NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s - goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.
This artist's concept shows NASA's Mars orbiters lining up behind the Red Planet for their "duck and cover" maneuver to shield them fro comet dust that may result from the close flyby of comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) on Oct. 19, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's NEOWISE mission detected comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on July 28, 2014, less than three months before this comet's close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19. This merging of multiple images presents the comet in four different positions relative to the background stars.
This map of Mars indicates locations of new craters that have excavated ice (blue) and those that have not (red). The underlying map is based on the brightness, or albedo, of the Martian surface.
This pair of maps indicates locations of confirmed sites of recurrent slope linea on Mars, with respect to elevation (upper map) and surface brightness, or albedo (lower map).
This false-color map shows the area within Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT) and the location where Curiosity collected its first drilled sample at the "John Klein" rock.
As fractures opened near the summit of Tyrrhena Patera, the ground collapsed to make pits and chains of pits aligned with the fractures. The large pit seen here is about 400 m (1,300 ft) deep.
Fans and ribbons of dark sand dunes creep across the floor of Bunge Crater in response to winds blowing from the direction at the top of the picture. The frame is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) wide.
This mosaic image of Valles Marineris - colored to resemble the martian surface - comes from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), a visible-light and infrared-sensing camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
When the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, landed on Meridiani Planum in January 2004, it quickly found what it had been sent from Earth to find: evidence of liquid water in the Martian past.
On the southwest edge of the immense volcanic region of Tharsis, lava from its giant volcanoes flowed down to meet the old cratered landscape of Terra Sirenum.
The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an unprecedented full decade of observing Mars from orbit.
Echus Chasma forms the boundary between the Tharsis volcanoes to the west and Lunae Planum to the east. This region is one of both tectonically fractured rocks (top of image) and volcanic flows (middle and bottom of image). Echus Chasma empties into Kasei Valles.
Just as on Earth, volcanism and tectonism are found together on Mars. Here is an example: the ridges and fractures of Claritas Fossae are affecting or perhaps hosting the volcanic flows of Solis Planum.
A vast dune field lies near the northern polar cap of Mars. Seen here in summer, the dunes have partially buried an impact crater about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) wide.
Sand dunes shaped like blue-black flames lie next to a central hill within an unnamed, 120-kilometer-wide (75-mile-wide) crater in eastern Arabia on Mars.
In Ares Vallis, teardrop mesas extend like pennants behind impact craters, where the raised rocky rims diverted the floods and protected the ground from erosion.
This image shows a 90-mile-wide portion of the giant Valles Marineris canyon system. Landslide debris and gullies in the canyon walls on Mars can be seen at 100 meters (330 feet) per pixel.
Valles Marineris, the "Grand Canyon of Mars," sprawls wide enough to reach from Los Angeles to nearly New York City, if it were located on Earth. The red outline box shows the location of a second, full-resolution image.
Sixteen seventh-graders at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image while participating in a program that enables students to use the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
This view of an area about 140 kilometers (about 90 miles) wide in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars shows the region around NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.
Stages in the seasonal disappearance of surface ice from the ground around the Phoenix Mars Lander are visible in these images taken on Feb. 8, 2010, (left) and Feb. 25, 2010, during springtime on northern Mars.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, its backshell and its heatshield are visible within this enhanced-color image of the Phoenix landing site taken on Jan. 6, 2010 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Continuing our survey of non-crater dune fields brings us to this group of dunes in Aonia Terra. The daytime IR illustrates the warmth of the dune material compared to the surrounding materials.
On the southwest edge of the immense volcanic region of Tharsis, lava from its giant volcanoes flowed down to meet the old cratered landscape of Terra Sirenum.
