Dunes Obstacle Course

This view of terrestrial rocks was taken by a testing twin -- the "life test unit" -- of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.

This photo mosaic shows the scour mark, dubbed Goulburn, left by the thrusters on the sky crane that helped lower NASA's Curiosity rover to the Red Planet.

This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011.

The Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view of "Vera Rubin Ridge" about two weeks before the rover starting to ascend this steep ridge on lower Mount Sharp.

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).

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 set of images illustrates how the science filters of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can be used to investigate aspects of the composition and mineralogy of materials ...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which landed the rover Curiosity on Mars in August 2012, accepts the Robert J. Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association at a ceremony in Arlin...

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, largest of the 10 science instruments for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will examine samples of Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere for inform...

The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Ha...

Members of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission team photographed themselves on March 20, 2020, the first day the entire mission team worked remotely from home. 

The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite will weigh about 83 pounds (38 kilograms) and make up about half the science payload of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. It is a suite of three inst...

President Obama phoned the team at JPL on Monday, Aug. 13, to congratulate them on the successful landing of Curiosity. "It's inspiring to all of us. Photographs that are coming back are going to b...

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.

Curiosity's DAN instrument for checking hydration levels in the ground beneath the rover detected an unusually high amount at a site near "Marias Pass," prompting repeated passes over the area to m...

See the steep slopes, layered buttes, and dark rocks surrounding Curiosity while it was parked below Gediz Vallis Ridge, which formed as a result of violent debris flows that were later eroded by w...

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...

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...

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...

Color coding in this image of Gale Crater on Mars represents differences in elevation, with blue relatively low and tan relatively high.

This right-eye member of a stereo pair of images from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a full 360-degree view of the rover's surroundings at the site where it fir...

A narrated play-by-play of Curiosity's entry, descent, and landing on Mars!

This view of "Vera Rubin Ridge" from the ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows sedimentary layers and fracture-filling mineral deposits. ChemCam's telescopic Remote Micro-Imager t...

This map traces where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove between landing at a site subsequently named "Bradbury Landing," and the position reached during the mission's 123rd Martian day, or sol, (De...

This artist's impression Mars' Gale Crater depicts a cross section through the mountain in the middle of the crater, from a viewpoint looking toward the southeast.