Mars on Earth

This self-portrait shows the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover from the rover's Navigation camera.

This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks down the ramp at the northeastern end of "Hidden Valley" and across the sandy-floored valley to lower slopes of Mount Sharp on the horizon.

Meet some of the women team members and hear about the exciting and challenging jobs they do in science and engineering while working with Mars rover Curiosity.

A Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) team member at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland prepares the SAM testbed for an experiment. This test copy of SAM is inside a chamber that can model t...

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...

The ChemCam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover examined a brushed area on target rock "Christmas Cove" on Sept. 17, 2017, and found spectral evidence of hematite, an iron-oxide mineral. Five lines on t...

This image shows a globe of Mars with the locations of the four proposed landing sites noted in white font and the locations of prior landed missions in yellow font. Prior landed missions include: ...

Scientists have now named the four marks near NASA's Curiosity rover where blasts from the descent stage rocket engines blew away some of the Martian surface material.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from where it landed in 2012 to its location in early March 2016, approaching 'Naukluft Plateau.' As the rover continues up Mount Shar...

The dual sections of the Atlas V payload fairing for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission await further processing in the airlock of the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kenne...

NASA's Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Martian surface between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019.

This video depicts NASA's Curiosity rover observing Mars' two moons, then shows one moon passing in front of the other. (No audio)

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.

This series of images shows the Martian moon Phobos as it crossed in front of the Sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Tuesday, March 26, 2019 (Sol 2359).

Curiosity is the biggest robot explorer ever to rove Mars. How do you power something like that?

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera will fly on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, launching in late 2011.

Video of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Nov. 26, 2011, onboard an Atlas V rocket.

An in-flight camera check on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft turned on illumination sources that are part of the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument.

The team operating NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's arm to check the condition of the wheels at routine intervals.

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...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 901 Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (February, 18, 2015).

This panorama of a location called "Teal Ridge" was captured on Mars by the Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on NASA's Curiosity rover on June 18, 2019, the 2,440th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

This movie clip shows Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, passing in front of the other Martian moon, Deimos, on Aug. 1, from the perspective of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover covers an area in "Bridger Basin" that includes the locations where the rover drilled a target called "Big Sky" on the missio...

The finished heat shield for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, with a diameter of 4.5 meters (14 feet, 9 inches), is the largest ever built for descending through the atmosphere of any planet. This i...