Sifting through the “Martian Soil”

It takes a whole team to operate Curiosity's arm. Pictured here are just a few of the team members who put their "muscle" to work every day to help operate Curiosity's arm on Mars.

The image was taken in the "Mars Yard," a simulated martian landscape used to test robots at JPL. The JPL Mars Yard is used by the research and flight projects to test different robotic prototypes. This facility provides a large test area and an outdoor environment to test different robotic applications under natural lighting conditions. The soil characteristics are matched to some regions on Mars, and the rock colors, sizes and distribution are intended to match images from our Martian missions.