Driving Over Sandy Ripples

The left eye of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the camera on the rover's arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), during the 30th Martian day, or sol, of...

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 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...

The Mars Science Laboratory mission team prepares for entry, descent and landing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space Flight Operations Facility in Pasadena, Calif., as Curiosity is hours from l...

This sequence of images from the Front Hazard-Avoidance Camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rover drilling into rock target "Cumberland." The drilling was performed during the 279th Ma...

The graph at right presents information from the NASA Curiosity Mars rover's onboard analysis of rock powder drilled from the "Big Sky" and "Greenhorn" target locations, shown at left.

As of June 2012, the target landing area for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission is the ellipse marked on this image of Gale Crater.

A test operator in clean-room garb observes rolling of the wheels during the first drive test of NASA's Curiosity rover, on July 23, 2010.

Test Model of Mars Landing Radar

A sample of basaltic rock from a lava flow in New Mexico serves as a calibration target carried on the front of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity for the rover's Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectr...

This image show the MSL BUD team

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...

This artist's conception of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory portrays use of the rover's ChemCam instrument to identify the chemical composition of a rock sample on the surface of Mars.

The penny in this image is part of a camera calibration target on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This image shows engineers' refinements of where NASA's Curiosity rover will enter the atmosphere of Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

Large-scale crossbedding in the sandstone of this ridge on a lower slope of Mars' Mount Sharp is typical of windblown sand dunes that have petrified. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mastcam to...

This 3D view of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was assembled from two images taken by that camera during the 34th Martian day, or so...

The NASA Mars rover Curiosity used its left Navigation Camera to record this view of the step down into a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay."

Stitched together from 28 images, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view from "Greenheugh Pediment" on April 9, 2020, the 2,729th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In the foreground is t...

Mawrth Vallis was considered as a landing site for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.

A panorama combining images from both cameras of the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows diverse geological textures on Mount Sharp. Three years after landing on Mars, the mission is inves...

About the size of a small toaster, the Radiation Assessment Detector will look skyward and use a stack of silicon detectors and a crystal of cesium iodide to measure galactic cosmic rays and solar ...

The left eye of the two-camera Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took the images combined into this mosaic of the rover's upper deck.

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The "powered descent vehicle" of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is being prepared for final integration into the spacecraft's back shell in this photograph from inside the Payload Hazard...