Driving Over Sandy Ripples

This panorama of the landscape surrounding NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on July 31, 2014, offers a view into sandy lower terrain called "Hidden Valley," which is on the planned route ahead.

This graphic portrays two hypotheses about how the element boron ended up in calcium sulfate veins found within mudstone layers of Mars' lower Mount Sharp.

This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a series of sedimentary deposits in the Glenelg area of Gale Crater, from a perspective in Yello...

A view from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on April 8, 2015, catches sight of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover passing through a valley called "Artist's Drive" on the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians work beneath NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission aeroshell, (containing the compact car-s...

Left and right eyes of the Navigation Camera (Navcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took the dozens of images combined into this stereo scene of the rover and its surroundings. The component image...

This graphic portrays the sequence of key events in August 2012 from the time the NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, with its rover Curiosity, enters the Martian atmosphere to a moment afte...

Aaron Yazzie and others explain how, by scooping dirt and drilling rocks, rovers are digging deeper into the mysteries of Mars.

So, you want to study Mars with a lander or rover - but where exactly do you send it? Learn how scientists and engineers tackle this question in this 60-second video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Labo...

On Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, lightning masts protect the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as it leaves behind the safety of the Vertical Integration Facility (...

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...

This scene was captured by Curiosity on Sept. 9, 2015, when NASA’s Mars rover was many miles from its current location.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and its tracks are visible in this view combining information from three observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Re...

The left Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of Curiosity's sample-processing and delivery tool just after the tool delivered a portion of powdered rock into the ro...

In this image from NASA's Curiosity rover, a rock outcrop called Link pops out from a Martian surface that is elsewhere blanketed by reddish-brown dust. The fractured Link outcrop has blocks of exp...

The long journey to Mars through the harsh environment of space confronts the Curiosity navigation team with a long list of challenges to get the spacecraft safely to its destination.

Many members of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, which operates the Curiosity rover on Mars, gathered for this 2016 team photo with a test rover in the "Mars Yard" at NASA's Jet Propulsion L...

This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

A Russian-built, neutron-shooting instrument on the Curiosity rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will check for water-bearing minerals in the ground beneath the rover.

This graph shows a spectrum recorded by the Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

Curiosity will have to survive the extreme temperatures of Mars. Is the rover ready? Engineers put it through thermal tests to find out.

This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, taken on April 3, 2014, includes a bright spot near the upper left corner. Possible explanations include a glint from a rock or a cosmic-ray hit.

The "Shaler" outcrop is dramatically layered, as seen in this mosaic of telephoto images from the right Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

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.

Stay curious with NASA and celebrate the agency’s Curiosity Mars rover’s 10th anniversary on the Red Planet with a two-sided poster that lists some of the intrepid explorer’s inspiring accomplishme...