Scarecrow Rover Wheel Closeup

This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA's Curiosity ...

Grad student Nicholas Boyd (left) and Principal Investigator Ralf Gellert, both of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, prepare for the installation of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer s...

A "scarecrow" rover at NASA's JPL drives over a sensor while testing a new driving algorithm. Engineers created the algorithm to reduce wheel wear on the Mars Curiosity rover.

The Mars Descent Imager for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory took this image inside the Malin Space Science Systems clean room in San Diego, Calif., during calibration testing of the camera in June 2...

A group of engineers and technicians prepare to mate the rover (tucked inside its backshell and turned upside-down on the left) to its protective heatshield, the black disk on the right.

Richard Cook has twice held the position of project manager of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

This mosaic image with a close-up inset, taken prior to the test, shows the rock chosen as the first target for NASA's Curiosity rover to zap with its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

Engineers use the Scarecrow rover to test driving on different types of terrain. In this image, the rover was taken out to the Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert, near Death Valley for tes...

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...

Preparation for Testing of Mars Landing Radar

At the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, and the spacecraft's descent stage have been enclosed inside the...

Michael Malin, left, principal investigator for three science cameras on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, comments to a news reporter during tests with Curiosity's mobility-test stand-in, Scarecrow, on...

This sequence of images shows a dust-carrying whirlwind, called a dust devil, on lower Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, as viewed by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover during the summer afternoon of the ro...

This Picasso-like self portrait of NASA's Curiosity rover was taken by its Navigation cameras, located on the now-upright mast.

This scene shows the surroundings of the location where NASA Mars rover Curiosity arrived on the 29th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Sept. 4, 2012).

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Navigation Camera (Navcam) on April 11, 2014, to record this scene of a butte called "Mount Remarkable" and surrounding outcrops at a waypoint called "the Kimbe...

Episode one launches with Jennifer Trosper in the driver’s seat. As she looks in the rearview mirror at twenty-five years of exploring with NASA’s Mars rovers, she reveals how their progression has...

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity acquired close-up views of sands in the "Rocknest" wind drift to document the nature of the material that the rover scooped, sieved ...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a section of the Atlas V payload fairing for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission hangs vertically fro...

The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has two rectangular "eyes" near the top of the rover's remote sensing mast. The mast is on the right side of the rover, which puts it on the...

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.

This sequence of images shows the heat shield from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory hitting the ground on Mars and raising a cloud of dust. The images were taken by the Mars Descent Imager on the mis...

This Sept. 25, 2015, view from the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a dark sand dune in the middle distance. The rover's examination of dunes on the way toward higher layers of Moun...

This video clip shows moments during a demonstration of drilling into a rock at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., with a test double of the Mars rover Curiosity. The drill combine...

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