Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

This map shows the route on lower Mount Sharp that NASA's Curiosity followed between April 19, 2015, and Nov. 5, 2015. During this period the mission investigated silica-rich rock targets includin...

A rippled patch of sand in Becquerel Crater on Mars moved about two meters (about two yards) between November 24, 2006 and September 5, 2010, as observed in these images taken by NASA's Mars Reconn...

This image acquired on January 25, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows Ius Chasma, a major section of the western portion of the giant Valles Marineris trough.

These images from orbit show an area near Mars' south pole where coalescing or elongated pits are interpreted as signs that an underlying deposit of frozen carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," has been sh...

The long, sinuous raised ridges on this fan of material are thought to be inverted stream channels. These ridges may have been low-lying streambeds that hardened and then turned into ridges when th...

This graph shows a spectrum recorded by the Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

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...

This image shows an outcrop of the south polar layered deposits (SPLD). The SPLD consist of layers of ice and admixed dust and make up the bulk of the dome-shaped Planum Australe.

This "ring trough" or eroded pit crater, is located in the rugged southern highland terrain known as Noachis Terra. The HiRISE image shows the layered, boulder-rich wall rock facing to the northeas...

Two pairs of side-by-side, before and after images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter illustrate changes in the shape of edges...

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the permanent polar cap of Mars, encircled by sand dunes and looking like pulled threads. These dunes march across a fabric of pattern...

This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Re...

This view taken from orbit around Mars shows the sand dune that will be the first to be visited by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover along its route to higher layers of Mount Sharp.

This image shows the context for orbital observations of exposed rocks that had been buried an estimated 5 kilometers (3 miles) deep on Mars.

A rippled dune front in Herschel Crater on Mars moved an average of about one meter (about one yard) between March 3, 2007 and December 1, 2010, as seen in these images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissa...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter dips into the thin martian atmosphere to adjust its orbit in this artist's concept illustration.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a close-up of a trough, along with channels draining into the depression. On the floor of the trough is some grooved material typically seen in...

Follow along on a tour of the landing scene of NASA's Curiosity rover in this video made up of images from two NASA orbiters. The movie begins with a global image from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, ...

These views of sites where hardware from Europe's Schiaparelli test lander hit Mars on Oct. 19, 2016, combine two HiRISE camera orbital views from different angles, as a stereo pair for viewing wit...

This animation shows NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying over NASA's Curiosity (shown in pink) as the rover lands on the Red Planet. The video is slowed down as the orbiter approaches the lan...

This image acquired on January 20, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a chaotic jumble of bright layered sediments, perhaps resulting from large landslides.

The rock layers in this image were likely horizontal when the materials were first deposited, but are now tilted to high angles, approaching 90 degrees.

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.

This picture of a heart-shaped pit was taken on 26 February 2008 by the CTX camera aboard MRO. It is approximately 2 km long. The pit is one of many adjacent to Hydaspis Chaos, a jumbled topographi...

These two Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) images were acquired over the northern plains of Mars near one of the possible landing sites for NASA's Phoenix mission, set t...