Countdown Nears: Final Tests

This illustration schematically shows where the Shallow Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected flood channels that had been buried by lava flows in the Elysium Planitia reg...

This 3D, or stereo anaglyph, view shows the upcoming science destination for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, a region dubbed "Glenelg," where three different types of material seen from orbit come tog...

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides this view of Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the solar system.

The MRO Context Camera, CTX, at Malin Space Science Systems in 2004, before it was delivered and mounted on the spacecraft.

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 image from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location associated with the novel and movie, "The Martian." It is the tale's planned landing site for the Ares 4 mis...

The smaller, narrow ridges oriented vertically are yardangs, which are created by wind erosion; the wind strips away the surrounding terrain, and the ridges remain because they contain more hardene...

This scene shows dark sand dunes marching over the ridges created by an alluvial (water-deposited) fan in an impact crater.

How before-and-after pictures led to the discovery of a fresh meteor impact crater on Mars.

Streaks seen on warm Martian slopes might be caused by seeping water rich in salts that lower its freezing point far below the freezing point of pure water. These features, known as Recurring Slope...

This nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012, shows a dust storm in Mars' southern hemisphere.

This movie clip shows a global map of Mars with atmospheric changes from Feb. 18, 2017, through March 6, 2017, a period when two regional-scale dust storms appeared. It combines hundreds of images ...

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...

Eridania Region Outcrops

This color-enhanced view shows the terrain around the rover's landing site within Gale Crater on Mars.

This image is located within Northern Sinus Meridiani, a region of ridged terrains and extensive stratigraphic layering.

The Mars Climate Sounder, an instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter designed to monitor daily changes in the global atmosphere of Mars, made its first observations of Mars on March 24, 2006.

Wrinkle Ridge in Solis Planum

This image shows a portion of the central mound in the impact crater Gale that is of interest to scientists because it is composed of light-toned layered deposits. 

These two frames were taken of the same place on Mars by the same camera before (left) and after some images from the camera began showing unexpected blur. The images are from the HiRISE camera on ...

These images from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show several impact scars on Mars made by pieces of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that the spacecraft shed just before entering ...

This 3D, or stereo anaglyph, view shows NASA's Mars rover Curiosity where it landed on Mars within Gale Crater, at a site now called Bradbury Landing. The view was produced from images taken by the...

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 123rd Martian day, or sol, (De...

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 Eridania basin of southern Mars is believed to have held a sea about 3.7 billion years ago, with seafloor deposits likely resulting from underwater hydrothermal activity. This graphic shows est...