Southern Meridiani

The leader of the entry, descent and landing team of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project, Adam Steltzner of JPL (left), accepts the 2013 Trophy for Current Achievement from the Smithsonian Natio...

This portion of an image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been annotated to show the relative positions between NASA's Curiosit...

Members of the Curiosity science team jump out of their seats and cheer when they hear that the Curiosity rover has successfully landed on the Martian surface.

As NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is progressing toward Mount Sharp, researchers are using the rover's instruments to examine soils and rocks in Gale Crater.

The 16 frames in this time-lapse movie show how repeated laser shots from the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cause a pit to form at the target point in Mar...

This feather-shaped iridescent cloud was captured just after sunset on Jan. 27, 2023, the 3,724th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission. Studying the colors in iridescent clouds tells scienti...

This artist's concept shows how the cruise stage de-spins outside the martian atmosphere, turns to entry position, suffers peak heating just after entry, then peak deceleration, before deploying a ...

This grid shows all 36 holes drilled by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover using the drill on the end of its robotic arm. The rover analyzes powderized rock from the drilling activities. The images in the...

This graph compares the elemental composition of typical soils at three landing regions on Mars.

Send Your Name to Mars microchip location, taken prior to the launch of NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover. More than 1.2 million names were submitted on our web site over a one year period! Some 20,000 ...

The sequence of six images in this animation shows sunspots as viewed by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from April 4 to April 15, 2015. From Mars, the rover was in position to see the opposite side of...

NASA’s Curiosity used its Mastcam to capture this impact crater in a location nicknamed “Jau” on July 25, the 3,899th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This was one of dozens of impact craters C...

Mars has two small, asteroid-sized moons named Phobos and Deimos.

As of June 2012, the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, is the ellipse marked on this image, about 12 miles long and 4 miles wide (20 kilometers...

With NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft sealed inside its payload fairing, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rides a pillar of smoke and flames as it lifts off from Space Launc...

NASA has selected Gale crater as the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Engineers put the rover through thousands of hours of testing. They did drop tests; pull tests; drive tests; load tests, and many other tests to get Curiosity ready for launch.

This image illustrates how spacecraft landings on Mars have become more and more precise over the years.

Since landing on Mars in August 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring 3-mile-high Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater.

This 360-degree scene shows the surroundings of the location where NASA Mars rover Curiosity arrived on the 59th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Oct. 5, 2012).

The extended robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can be seen in this mosaic of full-resolution images from Curiosity's Navigation camera (Navcam). Curiosity extended its arm on Aug. 20, 2012.

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

Side-by-side images depict NASA's Curiosity rover (left) and a moon buggy driven during the Apollo 16 mission.

Patches of Martian sandstone visible in the lower-left and upper portions of this view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover have a knobbly texture due to nodules apparently...

Sulfates are found overlying clay minerals in sediments within Columbus Crater, a depression that likely hosted a lake in the past.