Countdown Nears: Final Tests

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity left the "Glenelg" area on July 4, 2013, on a "rapid transit route" to the entry point for the mission's next major destination, the lower layers of Mount Sharp.

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 spa...

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 ont...

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.

This image acquired on January 23, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the western portion of a well-preserved (recent) impact crater in Ladon Basin.

Download a PDF of the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Fact Sheet.

This pair of images covers one of many sites on Mars where researchers use the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to study changes in gullies on slopes. Changes such as the ones v...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on...

This image shows an example of layers in the Martian north polar deposits. These deposits, part of the Planum Boreum dome, are composed mainly of water ice and small amounts of dust.

This pair of images taken one day apart by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) weather camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals when an asteroid impact made the scar seen in the right-hand im...

Back-and-forth blinking of this two-image animation shows movement of a sand dune on Mars. The images are part of a study published by Nature on May 9, 2012, reporting movement of Martian sand dune...

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

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been working on Mars since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time; evening of Jan. 24, Pacific Standard Time).

This image shows layered sedimentary rocks and ripples that fill and surround an impact crater in Meridiani Planum, an equatorial region where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian s...

This animation flips back and forth between views taken in 2010 and 2014 of a Martian sand dune at the edge of Mount Sharp, documenting dune activity. The images are from the HiRISE camera on NASA'...

The black speck circled in the lower left corner of this image is a cluster of recently formed craters spotted on Mars using a new machine-learning algorithm. This image was taken by the Context Ca...

Aonia Terra Dune Field

This image (top) taken by the Shallow Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals the layers of ice, sand and dust that make up the north polar ice cap on Mars

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera would make a great backyard telescope for viewing Mars, and we can also use it at Mars to view other planets. This is an image of Eart...

This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows gullies near the edge of Hale crater on southern Mars. The view covers an ...

This image shows NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity perched on the edge of "Concepción" crater in Meridiani Planum, Mars.

Sand dunes are among the most widespread wind-formed (aeolian) features present on Mars.

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

Streamlined forms in this Martian valley resulted from the outflow of a lake hundreds of millions years more recently than an era of Martian lakes previously confirmed. This image from the Context ...

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.