Nili Fossae Trough

This closeup view from NASA's Curiosity rover shows finely layered rocks, deposited by wind long ago as migrating sand dunes.

This raw image of "Tintina," a broken rock fragment in a rover wheel track, was taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam).

At the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, workers uncover half of the Atlas V payload fairing for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, encased ...

This simulation shows the first test drive of NASA's Curiosity rover. This tool, called the Rover Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP) helps engineers plan the rover's drives, modeling pebbl...

This image shows an example of a thin-laminated, evenly stratified rock type that occurs in the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars. The Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rove...

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on the day of NASA's Curiosity rover landing on the Red Planet. The rover touched down on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning ...

Clara Ma, winner of the Mars Science Laboratory naming contest.

During final stacking of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, the heat shield is positioned for integration with the rest of the spacecraft in this photograph from inside the Payload Hazardou...

Curiosity will spend the holidays at a location on Mars dubbed "Grandma's House."

Prominent mineral veins at the "Garden City" site examined by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover vary in thickness and brightness, as seen in this image from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam). The image c...

Filled with briny lakes, the Quisquiro salt flat in South America's Altiplano represents the kind of landscape that scientists think may have existed in Gale Crater, which NASA's Curiosity rover is...

A Martian target rock called "Nova," shown here, displayed an increasing concentration of aluminum as a series of laser shots from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover penetrated through dust on the rock's ...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover began close-up investigation of a target called "Marimba," on lower Mount Sharp, during the week preceding the fourth anniversary of the mission's Aug. 6, 2016, landing....

After two Martian years, Curiosity is more than a Mars geologist, scientist and explorer. It's a Mars weather reporter, too.

This episode (part 4 of a 4 part series) shows Mars team members having a little fun on April 1, 2010 (April Fool's) at the end of an exhausting parachute test campaign. The team had just completed...

This image from Curiosity's Mastcam shows inclined beds of sandstone interpreted as the deposits of small deltas fed by rivers flowing down from the Gale Crater rim and building out into a lake whe...

This plot shows the first-ever look at the deuterium to hydrogen ratio measured from the surface of Mars, as detected by the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, on NASA's Curiosity rover.

This diagram illustrates how Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is now driving, might have formed billions of years ago.

Wheels were first attached to NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover in August 2008.

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.

In the clean room at JPL, engineers gather around the base of Curiosity's "neck" (the Mast) as they slowly lower it into place for attachment to the rover’s "body" (the Wet Electronics Box, or "WEB").

The right Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover provided this contextual view of the vicinity of the location called "John Klein," selected as Curiosity's first drilling site.

This engineering drawing shows the arm on NASA's Curiosity's rover in its "ready- for-action" position, or "ready out" as engineers say, in addition to the position it assumes to drop off samples.

This sequence of images from the Front Hazard-Avoidance Camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rover drilling into rock target "Cumberland." The drilling was performed during the 279th Ma...

JPL researchers Jessica Creamer, Fernanda Mora and Peter Willis (left to right) pose with the Chemical Laptop, a device designed to detect amino acids and fatty acids. At left is a near-identical c...