Curiosity's Post-Landing Lithograph

After a rocket-powered descent stage, also known as the sky crane, delivered NASA's Curiosity rover to Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), 2012, it flew away and fell to the surface.

In this Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter view of the Curiosity rover mission's waypoint called "the Kimberley," the red dot indicates the location of a sandstone target, "Windjana," selected for close-u...

Employees at Space Launch Complex 41 of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., keep watch as the payload fairing containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is lifted up the side of the V...

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Ha...

Graphic illustrating the MAVEN spacecraft encountering plasma layers at Mars.

This image captures a fairly rare situation. In general, as lava flows along, it fills in low points and holes it encounters in its path and flows around high points such as hills and ridges. In th...

The rover took a 360-degree panorama of the area depicting its last drill hole on the ridge (at a location called "Rock Hall").

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 ...

Curiosity sends home special messages before heading onto the Martian plain towards her first target.

The Martian outcrop where pale rock meets darker overlying rock near the middle of this view is an example of a geological contact.

Tantalus Fossae are a set of faults on the eastern flank of Alba Mons, one of the great Tharsis Montes volcanoes. Here a fault cuts into this crater, indicating that the fault formed after the crat...

This artist's concept depicts the interaction of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft with the upper atmosphere of Mars during the entry, descent and landing of the Curiosity rover onto the Ma...

For optimal communications during arrival at Mars, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, will launch after Thanksgiving 2011 and land on Mars in August 2012.

Sandstone layers with varying resistance to erosion are evident in this Martian scene recorded by the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Feb. 25, 2014, about one-quarter mile (about 400 ...

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...

The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite will weigh about 83 pounds (38 kilograms) and make up about half the science payload of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. It is a suite of three inst...

A Goldstone 111.5-foot (34-meter) beam-waveguide antenna tracks a spacecraft as it comes into view. The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex is located in the Mojave Desert in California. 

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 color view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

A crane positions the 106.5-foot-long first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape ...

This simulation shows the first test drive of NASA's Curiosity rover. This tool, called the Rover Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP) helps engineers plan the rover's drives, modeling pebbl...

There are no gas stations or power outlets in space. That's why NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars--and some other NASA spacecraft that explore the solar system--use something called "radioisotope powe...

Download the PDF or PPT of the MAVEN Overview Presentation.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity captured this 360-degree view using its Navigation Camera (Navcam) after a 17-foot (5.3 meter) drive on 477th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 8, 2...

This animation shows the location of a set of Hazard-Avoidance cameras on the back of NASA's Curiosity rover. Each camera is protected by a clear dust cover, shown here popping off. (No audio)