Southern Meridiani

This engineering animation depicts the moves that NASA's rover Curiosity made on Sept. 22, 2012, when the rover touched a Martian rock with its robotic arm for the first time. Curiosity examined th...

This global map of Mars was acquired on Aug. 4, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

These schematic drawings show a top view and a cutaway view of a section of the drill on NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars.

This image graphs four gases released ("evolved") when powdered rock from the target rock "Cumberland" was heated inside the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity Mars ...

Looking Back at the Crater Rim

When the Martian Moon Phobos passed in front of the sun, from the perspective of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, the rover recorded the eclipse in the sky as well as the shadow darkening the ground. (...

This collage shows the variety of soils found at landing sites on Mars.

This is the first image taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT).

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the 32 individual images that make up this panorama of the outcrop nicknamed “Mont Mercou.” It took a second panorama to create a ste...

This wide view of the "John Klein" location selected for the first rock drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is a mosaic taken by Curiosity's right Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the afternoon of ...

John Grotzinger, Curiosity's principal investigator, narrates an aerial tour of the rover's past, present and future traverses on the Red Planet.

This overhead view shows evidence of a successful first test drive for NASA's Curiosity rover.

As of June 2012, the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover inside NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, is the ellipse marked in black on this image.

Pictured here are some of the women working on the Curiosity rover. The picture was taken in the working "garage" where Curiosity's ground test rover is housed in the "Mars Yard," a simulated mart...

The cruise stage will have support ribs, solar arrays, a radiator, and an adapter for connecting the vehicle to the rockets that will launch it from Earth.

This view of the head of the remote sensing mast on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, Curiosity, shows seven of the 17 cameras on the rover.

This stereo view from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows a rock called "Link," which bears rounded pebbles that provide evidence about vigorous flow of water in a stream on ancient Mars.

This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a series of sedimentary deposits in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater, from a perspective in Yello...

How samples are delivered and then tested in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite on the Mars Curiosity rover. (No audio)

This nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 18, 2012, shows a dust storm in Mars' southern hemisphere.

This image shows where NASA's Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a pyramid-shaped rock known as "Jake Matijevic."

This sped-up movie from the Curiosity rover shows Phobos (the larger of Mars' two moons) passing in front of smaller Deimos. (No audio)

This close-up view shows NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. The image was captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbite...

This set of graphs shows variation in the amount and the depth of water detected beneath NASA's Mars rover Curiosity by use of the rover's Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument at different p...

Preparing for a Mars Radar Test