Sandy Dunes

Testing of the robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sept. 3, 2010, included movements of the arm while the rover was on a table tilted to 20 degrees to simulate a sloped surface on Mars.

This map shows the route on lower Mount Sharp that NASA's Curiosity followed between April 19, 2015, and Nov. 5, 2015. During this period the mission investigated silica-rich rock targets includin...

This pair of images shows a "bite mark" where NASA's Curiosity rover scooped up some Martian soil (left), and the scoop carrying soil.

The cruise stage of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is being prepared for final stacking of the spacecraft in this photograph from inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA ...

This image shows the cruise structure (the 'ring' on top) and one part of the aeroshell (the backshell with the rover inside) flipped over and the bottom of the aeroshell (the black heat shield) be...

NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, stretches its robotic arm upward during Sept. 3, 2010, tests on a tilt table in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labotatory, Pasadena, Calif. Test operators ...

Preparing for a Mars Radar Test

This is the first image taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT).

A screen view from OnSight, a software tool developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in collaboration with Microsoft. OnSight uses real rover data to create a 3-D simulation of the Martian en...

Clara Ma, winner of the contest to name NASA's Curiosity rover, in 2009 with an engineering model of the rover (left) and as a graduate student in 2019 (right)

NASA's Curiosity rover successfully drilled a 2-inch-deep hole in a target called "Duluth" on May 20. It was the first rock sample captured by the drill since October 2016. This image was taken by ...

This mosaic image shows part of the left side of NASA's Curiosity rover and two blast marks from the descent stage's rocket engines.

A day after NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled the first sample-collection hole into a rock on Mars, the rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument shot laser pulses into the fresh rock pow...

This view shows grains of sand where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover was driven into a shallow sand sheet near a large dune. The scene covers an area 1.3 inches wide, imaged by Curiosity's Mars Hand Le...

Mars Parachute Testing in World's Largest Wind Tunnel

This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA's Curiosity ...

This animation shows a proposed route for NASA's Curiosity rover, which is climbing lower Mount Sharp on Mars. The annotated version of the map labels different regions that scientists working with...

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 ...

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove about 70 feet (about 21 meters) on the mission's 21st Martian day, or sol (Aug. 30, 2012) and then took images with its Navigation Camera that are combined into th...

One priority target for a closer look by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity before the rover departs the "Glenelg" area east of its landing site is the pitted outcrop called "Point Lake," in the upper hal...

The foreground of this scene from the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows purple-hued rocks near the rover's late-2016 location. The middle distance includes future destinations for the ro...

As NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is progressing toward Mount Sharp, researchers are using the rover's instruments to examine soils and rocks in Gale Crater.

This artist's concept depicts the rover Curiosity, of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, as it uses its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument to investigate the composition of a rock surface.

Two spacecraft engineers join a grouping of vehicles providing a comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The setting is JPL's ...

This raw image of "Tintina," a broken rock fragment in a rover wheel track, was taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam).