Countdown Nears: Final Tests

Lucus Planum is a part of the enigmatic Medusa Fossae Formation, a broad, soft, and easily eroded deposit. Here this deposit is thin and considerably rougher than elsewhere, implying that it is hea...

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...

HiRISE captured this image of an eroded mesa made famous by its similarity to a human face in a Viking Orbiter image with much lower spatial resolution and a different lighting geometry.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 29th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Sept. 4, 2012).

Two types of wind-blown sedimentary deposits are pictured in this scene of the floor of Ius Chasma in the Valles Marineris.

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...

This DLE [double layer ejecta] crater formed at the edge of an older/pre-existing crater, the rim of which deflected some of its ejecta.

Two 2001 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance during a dust storm.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures the springtime thaw of seasonal carbon dioxide ice on Mars.

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 ...

Nili Patera is a region on Mars in which dunes and ripples are moving rapidly. HiRISE continues to monitor this area every couple of months to see changes over seasonal and annual time scales.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observes many slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars showing icy flows or glaciers. The region shown here, in the south-facing slope of a crater, is unusual becau...

Eberswalde Crater contains layered rocks about 100-meters thick exposed in a a well-preserved delta.

By analyzing radar images like the one at top of this montage, scientists discovered evidence for a past ice age in the northern polar ice cap of Mars.

Curiosity performs the first investigation of active sand dunes on another planet. Studying the Bagnold Dunes on Mars will help scientists understand the physics of Martian dunes and how they move.

The red line on this map shows where NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity has driven from the place where it landed in January 2004 -- inside Eagle Crater, at the upper left end of the track -- to where i...

This close-up image of a dust storm on Mars was acquired by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 7, 2007

Two dark, rimless pits are located to the northwest of Ascraeus Mons in the Tharsis volcanic region of Mars.

This picture of a crater resembling a "happy face" was taken in January 2008, by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Context Camera. The unnamed crater is almost 2 miles (about 3 kilometers) across.

This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this color image on March 9, 2011, of "Santa Maria" crater, showing NASA's Mars Explora...

These images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the appearance of dark markings on Martian slope changes with the sea...

The Mars Color Imager (MARCI), shown here with a gloved hand for scale, is designed to produce a global map to help characterize daily, seasonal and year-to-year variations in Mars' climate, provid...

The insert in this image is a simulation of what the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's optical navigation camera images of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos will look like.

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, ...