Countdown Nears: Final Tests

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in September 2016 at "Murray Buttes," and the path planned for reachi...

It's not only when trying to find a scientifically interesting place to land that the high-resolution images from HiRISE come in handy: it's also to identify potential hazards within a landing elli...

These barchan (crescent-shaped) sand dunes are found within the North Polar erg of Mars.

These dark streaks, also known as “slope streaks,” resulted from dust avalanches on Mars. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured them on Dec. 26, 2017.

The colorful rocks exposed in the central peak visible in this image probably reflect variations in mineral content that were caused by water activity early in Mars' history. The CRISM hyperspectra...

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.

Phobos from 5,800 Kilometers

This map shows unprecedented detail of local variations in Mars' gravitational pull on orbiters. The gravitational mapping has been applied to map variations in the thickness of the planet's crust ...

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...

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

This enhanced image shows the inside of a rimless pit about 180 meters (591 feet) in diameter, northwest of the mountain Ascraeus Mons in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

This graphic maps locations of the sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected its first 19 rock or soil samples for laboratory analysis inside the vehicle. It also presents images of the dri...

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 image, acquired on May 15, 2018, by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows relatively bright mounds scattered throughout darker and diverse surfaces in Chryse Planitia.

This image maps the traverse of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity from "Bradbury Landing" to "Yellowknife Bay," with an inset documenting a change in the ground's thermal properties with arrival at a dif...

With the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument just above his head, a technician at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center works on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft...

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 130th Martian day, or sol, (De...

Mars' north polar deposits comprise a thick stack of icy layers. Part of this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has lingering seasonal frost, which serves to accentuate those laye...

The material in the upper portion of this image, perhaps hardened volcanic ash deposits, is being eroded into parallel long, thin ridges called yardangs by the strong prevailing winds.

Candor Chasma is one of the major canyons within Valles Marineris. The floor of this canyon consist of many layers of light-toned sediments that have been folded and faulted, giving them the wavy a...

This animation blinks between two images of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander hardware around the mission's 2008 landing site on far-northern Mars.  By late 2017, dust obscures much of what was visible tw...

This graphic illustrates where Mars mineral-mapping from orbit has detected minerals that can indicate where a volcano erupted beneath an ice sheet. The site is far from any ice sheet on modern Mar...

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Aram Chaos, an ancient impact crater that lies within in the Southern Highlands of Mars. Uplifted blocks are composed largely of the iron-ox...

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of a meteoroid impact that was first detected by the agency’s InSight lander using its seismometer. This crater was formed on Aug. 30, 2021.

From a distance, the floor of this crater looks like a giant honeycomb or spider web. The intersecting shapes, or polygons, commonly occur in the northern lowlands of Mars.