Scarecrow Rover Desert Tests

This graphic maps locations of the sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected its first 18 rock or soil samples for laboratory analysis inside the vehicle. It also presents images of the dri...

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.

Curiosity performs a series of firsts this week -- flexing its arm, laser-zapping a rock and rolling on its wheels.

John Grotzinger is standing at the face of a cliff and in discussion with two other team members. The cliff, which is beige and gray in color, has many layers in the rocks. Ken Edgett, wearing a ba...

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon," similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit...

This image maps the traverse of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity from "Bradbury Landing" to "Yellowknife Bay," with an inset documenting a change in the ground's thermal properties with arrival at a dif...

This global map of Mars was acquired on Aug. 2, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Soar over the crater on Mars that will be the landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover.

A shiny-looking Martian rock is visible in this image taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the mission's 173rd Martian day, or sol (Jan. 30, 2013).

This Dec. 18, 2015, view of the downwind face of "Namib Dune" on Mars covers 360 degrees, including a portion of Mount Sharp on the horizon. The component images were taken by the Mast Camera on NA...

This stereo view of terrestrial rocks combines two images taken by a testing twin of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory. It appears three-dimensional when vi...

Five years of images from the front left hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover were used to create this time-lapse movie. The inset map shows the rover's location in Mars'...

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft separates from the upper stage of its Atlas V launch vehicle and heads on its way to Mars.

This 360-degree panorama from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rocky terrain surrounding it as of its 55th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 1, 2012).

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...

The dark band in the lower portion of this Martian scene is part of the "Bagnold Dunes" dune field lining the northwestern edge of Mount Sharp. The scene combines multiple images taken with the Mas...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove 83 feet eastward during the 102nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Nov. 18, 2012), and used its left navigation camera to record this view ahead at the end of ...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater.

A grid of small polygons on the Martian rock surface near the right edge of this view may have originated as cracks in drying mud more than 3 billion years ago. Multiple Dec. 20, 2016, images from ...

If the atmosphere of Mars contains methane, various possibilities have been proposed for where the methane could come from and how it could disappear.

Under the watchful eyes of technicians at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an overhead crane lowers a rocket-powered descent stage over NASA's Mar...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in July 2017 (Sol 1750), and its planned path to additional geologic...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover targeted the laser of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument with remarkable accuracy for assessing the composition of the wall of a drilled hole and tailings tha...

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powdered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis.

How a Martian mountain came to be: the story behind Curiosity's current location on Mars.