Gale Crater

This is a map of lower Mount Sharp on Mars, showing the major geologic units identified from orbit.

This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during testing on June 3, 2011. The location is inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labo...

On Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is in place at Space Launch Complex 41 after rolling out from the nearby Vertical Integration...

One type of feature of scientific interest on the mountain inside Gale crater is exposure of cemented fractures, evidence that groundwater once reached to at least that height of the mountain.

Engineers and technicians have been planning for months and working for weeks on the big move for NASA's Mars Curiosity rover.

The first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission arrives at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its laser and spectrometers to examine what chemical elements are in a drift of Martian sand during the mission's 7...

Left and right eyes of the Navigation Camera (Navcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took the dozens of images combined into this stereo scene of the rover and its surroundings. The component image...

Mars Rover Photosynth

This false-color image shows how special filters of the Curiosity Mars rover's Mastcam can help reveal certain minerals in target rocks. It is a composite of images taken Sept. 17, 2017, through th...

This hole, with a diameter slightly smaller than a U.S. dime, was drilled by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover into a rock target called "Telegraph Peak." The rock is located within the basal layer of Mo...

This image is from a test series used to characterize the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012, and looks south-southwest from the rover's landing site.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks left by its driving appear in this portion of a Dec. 11, 2013, observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Re...

This view combines several frames taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, looking into a valley to the west from the eastern side of a dune at the eastern end of the valley.

This set of views illustrates capabilities of the Mast Camera (MastCam) instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover, using a scene on Earth as an example of what MastCam's two camer...

This map of Mars shows all of the more than 60 landing sites proposed for the Mars Science Laboratory (red dots) and the four final candidate sites (blue dots).

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has caught the first image of asteroids taken from the surface of Mars.

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...

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

Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, along with the mission's descent stage, arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., on June 22, 2011, aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 transpor...

This full-resolution color image from NASA's Curiosity Rover shows the gravel-covered surface of Mars. It was taken by the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) several minutes after Curiosity touched down o...

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...

The series of nine images making up this animation were taken by the rear Hazard-Avoidance Camera (rear Hazcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the rover drove over a dune spanning "Dingo Gap" on...

The long journey to Mars through the harsh environment of space confronts the Curiosity navigation team with a long list of challenges to get the spacecraft safely to its destination.

This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012.