Gale Crater

In this image, a large, six-wheeled rover sits on a concrete floor in a laboratory against a light-blue background. The rover's 'legs,' or mobility system are a medium blue color and the large, cle...

NASA's Curiosity rover explores Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the basin of Gale Crater on Mars. 

The graph at right presents information from the NASA Curiosity Mars rover's onboard analysis of rock powder drilled from the "Buckskin" target location, shown at left.

A day after NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled the first sample-collection hole into a rock on Mars, the rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument shot laser pulses into the fresh rock pow...

This 360-degree vista was acquired on Aug. 5, 2016, by the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the rover neared features called "Murray Buttes" on lower Mount Sharp. The dark, flat-topped mes...

Amanda Steffy and Rob Sullivan help shape a course of sand ripples for the Scarecrow rover to drive over. This test was done in the Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert, near Death Valley.

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows a sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill from the "Confidence Hills" target.

This artist's concept shows thrusters firing during the entry, descent and landing phase for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission to Mars.

This graphic shows the flux of radiation detected by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on the trip from Earth to Mars from December 2011 to July 2012.

Illustrations of NASA's Curiosity and Mars 2020 rovers. While the newest rover borrows from Curiosity's design, each has its own role in the ongoing exploration of Mars and the search for ancient l...

This 3-D view of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was assembled from two images taken by that camera during the 34th Martian day, or s...

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, left, and Erisa Hines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, speak to members of the news media during a preview of the new "Destination: Mars...

These 26 holes represent each of the rock samples NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected as of early July 2020. A map in the upper left shows where the holes were drilled along the rover's route...

This view shows grains of sand where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover was driven into a shallow sand sheet near a large dune. The scene covers an area 1.3 inches wide, imaged by Curiosity's Mars Hand Le...

This movie from NASA's Curiosity rover shows all the "thumbnail" (low-resolution) frames acquired by the Mars Descent Imager between the jettison of the heat shield and touchdown. The video, obtain...

This patch of Martian bedrock, about 2 feet (70 centimeters) across, is finely layered rock with some pea-size inclusions. It lies near the lowest point of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop, which forms ...

This April 4, 2014, image from Curiosity's Mastcam looks to the west of a waypoint on the rover's route to Mount Sharp. The mountain lies to the left of the scene. The image shows sets of sandstone...

The network of cracks in this Martian rock slab called "Old Soaker" may have formed from the drying of a mud layer more than 3 billion years ago.

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...

This scene combines images taken by the left-eye camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover during the midafternoon, local Mars solar time, of the mission's 526th...

Meet some of the women team members and hear about the exciting and challenging jobs they do in science and engineering while working with Mars rover Curiosity.

This artist's impression Mars' Gale Crater depicts a cross section through the mountain in the middle of the crater, from a viewpoint looking toward the southeast.

A green star marks the location of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover after a drive on the mission's 957th Martian day, or sol, (April 16, 2015). The map covers an area about 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) wide.

This sequence of images shows a dust-carrying whirlwind, called a dust devil, scooting across ground inside Gale Crater, as observed on the local summer afternoon of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover's 1...

Concretions at 'Cumberland'