Southern Meridiani

This figure shows the location of CHIMRA on the turret of NASA's Curiosity rover, together with a cutaway view of the device.

This exposure of finely laminated bedrock on Mars includes tiny crystal-shaped bumps, plus mineral veins with both bright and dark material. This rock target, called "Jura," was imaged by the MAHLI...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover completed a shallow "mini drill" test April 29, 2014, in preparation for full-depth drilling at a rock target called "Windjana." This image from Curiosity's Mars Hand Le...

These three versions of the same image taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity illustrate different choices that scientists can make in presenting the colors recorded by t...

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a network of two-tone mineral veins at an area called "Garden City" on lower Mount Sharp.

These two signature microchips (circled in red) carry 1.2 million names submitted from the public.

This image taken by NASA's Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover -- its main science target, Mount Sharp.

This pair of images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rock target "Cumberland" before and after Curiosity drilled into it to collect a sample for analy...

This view from the wide-angle Hazard Avoidance Camera on the front of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows the rover's drill in position for a mini-drill test to assess whether a rock target called "M...

This image shows two engineers aiming the cannon that will fire the tightly packed parachute into the wind tunnel.

This area at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars includes a pale outcrop, called "Pahrump Hills," that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover investigated from September 2014 to March 2015, and the "Artist's Driv...

This March 25, 2014, view from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks southward at the Kimberley waypoint. In the foreground, multiple sandstone beds show systematic inclination to the so...

A wheel track cuts through a windblown ripple of dusty sand in this Nov. 7, 2014, image from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity rover. The view spans about four feet across. This experiment was planne...

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

This image of the northwestern portion of Mars' Gale Crater and terrain north of it, from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, provides a locator map for some features visible in an Oc...

This pair of graphs shows about one-fourth of a Martian year's record of temperatures (in degrees Celsius) measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to take the exposures combined into this stereo view of a wee crater, informally named "Skylab," along the rover's route. The co...

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 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.

This view of grains from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Ore., was taken by a testing twin of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.

Download a PDF of the Mars Science Laboratory Launch Press Kit.

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was used to check the composition of gray tailings from the hole in rock target "Cumberland" that the rover drilled on M...

Half of the Atlas V payload fairing for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, encased in plastic, is lifted from its transportation pallet in the airlock of the Payload Hazardous Servicing ...

This pair of images shows effects of one Martian day of wind blowing sand underneath NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on a non-driving day for the rover. Each image was taken just after sundown by the r...

Astronaut Leland Melvin, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Education, has a little fun with teachers while talking about how to eat snacks in space. Melvin served on board the Space Shuttle Atlant...