Sandy Dunes

About the size of a small SUV, NASA's Curiosity rover is well equipped for a tour of Gale Crater on Mars.

With NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft sealed inside its payload fairing, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket stands ready for launch at Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canavera...

The 70m antenna at Goldstone, California against the background of the Mojave desert.

This May 12, 2014, view from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) in NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows the rock target "Windjana" and its immediate surroundings after inspection of the site by the rov...

The Curiosity engineering team created this view from images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover front hazard avoidance cameras underneath the rover deck on Sol 0.

Details such as the shadow of the mast on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity appear in an image taken Aug. 17, 2012, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconn...

The suspension system on NASA Mars rover Curiosity easily accommodates rolling over a ramp in this Sept. 10, 2010, test drive inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labora...

The surface of the Martian rock target in this stereo, close-up image from the Curiosity rover's MAHLI camera includes small hollows with a "swallowtail" shape characteristic of gypsum crystals. Th...

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.

Results from Opportunity and Curiosity show Mars could have supported life.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover provided this nighttime view of a hole produced by the rover's drill and, inside the hole, a line of scars produced by the rover's rock-zapp...

This low-angle self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called "Buckskin." Bright powder from that July 30, ...

Prominent mineral veins at the "Garden City" site examined by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover vary in thickness and brightness, as seen in this image from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam). The image c...

This full-resolution image from NASA's Curiosity shows the elbow joint of the rover's extended robotic arm on Aug. 20, 2012. The Navigation Camera captured this view.

The first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission rolls out of the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida bound for ...

This animated blink comparison shows five versions of observations that NASA's Curiosity rover made about one hour apart while Mercury was passing in front of the sun on June 3, 2014. Two sunspots...

​NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered ancient organic molecules on Mars, embedded within sedimentary rocks that are billions of years old.

This graphic shows proportions of minerals identified by the Curiosity Mars rover's CheMin instrument in mudstone outcrops at "Yellowknife Bay" in 2013 and at "Murray Buttes" in 2016. For example, ...

This wide panorama was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Dec. 19, 2019, the 2,620th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. On the righthand foreground is Western Butte; the ridge with a crusty ...

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 ...

This is an artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during its cruise phase between launch and final approach to Mars.

This stereo panoramic view combines 14 images taken by the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity during the mission's 120th Martian day, or sol (Dec. 7, 2012).

This image shows the location (green) where scientists estimate NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars within Gale Crater, based on images from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).

This 3D, or stereo anaglyph, view shows NASA's Mars rover Curiosity where it landed on Mars within Gale Crater, at a site now called Bradbury Landing. The view was produced from images taken by the...

Follow along on a tour of the landing scene of NASA's Curiosity rover in this video made up of images from two NASA orbiters. The movie begins with a global image from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, ...