Planum Australe Region

NASA Science missions circle Earth, the Sun, the Moon, Mars and many other destinations within our solar system, including spacecraft that look out even further into our universe. The Science Fleet...

Researchers have found deposits of impact glass preserved in Martian craters, including Alga Crater, shown here.

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.

These dunes may be active today, but we haven't yet observed them at significantly different times to measure the movement.

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...

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.

Five images of comet Siding Spring taken within a 35-minute period as it passed near Mars on Oct. 19, 2014, provide information about the size of the comet's nucleus. The images were acquired by th...

Image of Hesperia Planum from the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This feature has a strange appearance, as if the crater has feet with toes sticking out of two sides. Let's try to explain this.

This image, taken Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA's no-longer-active Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft after its second Martian arctic winter.

What appear to be spiders scampering across the martian landscape are actually cracks in the surface of the southern polar region on Mars, seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 23, 2009...

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, ...

This image of Victoria Crater in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at more of a s...

Artist's concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

This scene is from early spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars. These dunes are covered with a layer of seasonal carbon dioxide ice (dry ice).

There are steep scarps facing the poles of both hemispheres that expose thick (up to 100 meters or more) sections of nearly pure water ice.

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...

The two largest quakes detected by NASA's InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae.

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 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 image taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows ice sheets at Mars’ south pole. The spacecraft detected clays nearby this ice; scientists have proposed such clays are the source of rad...

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, working on Mars since January 2004, passed marathon distance in total driving on March 24, 2015. This map shows the rover's entire traverse from landing to that point.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a hill with a central crater. Such features have been interpreted as both mud volcanoes (really a sedimentary structure) and as actual volca...

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 shows the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate.