Driving Over Sandy Ripples

With NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft sealed inside its payload fairing, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rides a tall pillar of smoke and flames as it soars over Space Laun...

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 oblique, southward-looking view of Gale crater shows the mound of layered rocks that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will investigate. The mission's selected landing site is just north of the m...

Technicians, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, use an overhead crane to move a rocket-powered descent stage for integration with NASA's Mars Sci...

A self-portrait taken by NASA's Curiosity rover taken on Sol 2082 (June 15, 2018). A Martian dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover's location in Gale Crater.

This view from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows dramatic buttes and layers on the lower flank of Mount Sharp. It was taken on Sept. 7, 2013, from near the waypoint called "Darwin" o...

This diagram shows the location of each of the Curiosity Rover's ten science instruments.

The Martian soil examined by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the diffraction signature, or "fingerprint," of the mineral olivine, shown here on Eart...

This 360-degree scene shows the surroundings of the location where NASA Mars rover Curiosity arrived on the 59th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Oct. 5, 2012).

Preparation for Testing of Mars Landing Radar

This false-color engineering drawing shows the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device, attached to the turret at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Curiosity Ma...

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

This image from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows the "Amargosa Valley," on the slopes leading up to Mount Sharp on Mars.

Musician will.i.am addresses a crowd of students at JPL during an event celebrating the first time in history that a recorded song has been beamed back to Earth from another planet.

On this image of the broken rock called "Tintina," color coding maps the amount of mineral hydration indicated by a ratio of near-infrared reflectance intensities measured by the Mast Camera (Mastc...

This focus-merge image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows a rock called "Burwash." The rock has a coating of dust on it. The coarser, visible gra...

The heat shield for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is the largest ever built for a planetary mission.

This series of images shows the Martian moon Deimos as it crossed in front of the Sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sunday, March 17, 2019 (the 2,350th Martian day, or sol, of the miss...

Nili Fossae Trough

This view of grains from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Ore., was taken by a testing twin of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory.

This image is from a test series used to characterize the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012, and looks south-southwest from the rover's landing site.

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 September 2016 at "Murray Buttes," and the path planned for reachi...

This simulation shows the first test drive of NASA's Curiosity rover. This tool, called the Rover Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP) helps engineers plan the rover's drives, modeling pebbl...

This diagram depicts a vertical cross section through geological layers deposited by rivers, deltas and lakes. Deposits from a series of successive deltas build out increasingly high in elevation a...

These images from the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover indicate similarly dark material, but with very different chemistries, in mineral veins at "Garden City."