Desolate Landscape

This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011. The location is inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propul...

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, right, is presented a plaque by JPL Director Michael Watkins during a tour of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Saturday, April 28, 2018 in Pasadena, California. The...

Curiosity got close to this outcrop on Sept. 9, 2016, which displays finely layered rocks.

This map shows the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity through the 1827 Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s mission on Mars (September 27, 2017). 

This illustration shows the instruments and subsystems of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite on the Curiosity Rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project.

The graph at right presents information from the NASA Curiosity Mars rover's onboard analysis of rock powder drilled from the "Big Sky" and "Greenhorn" target locations, shown at left.

A close-up image of a 2-inch-deep hole produced using a new drilling technique for NASA's Curiosity rover. The hole is about 0.6 inches across (1.6 centimeters). This image was taken by Curiosity's...

A crane is attached to the first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission upon its arrival at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cap...

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...

This artist's illustration shows NASA's four successful Mars rovers (from left to right): Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, and Curiosity. The image also shows the upcoming Mars 2020 rover and a h...

This full-resolution image shows one of the first views from NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (early morning hours Aug. 6 EDT).

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the MAHLI camera at the end of its arm in April and May 2014 to take dozens of component images combined into this self-portrait where the rover drilled into a sand...

This set of images shows the similarity of sulfate-rich veins seen on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover to sulfate-rich veins seen on Earth.

This image from Curiosity's Mastcam shows inclined beds of sandstone interpreted as the deposits of small deltas fed by rivers flowing down from the Gale Crater rim and building out into a lake whe...

Sensors on two finger-like mini-booms extending horizontally from the mast of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will monitor wind speed, wind direction and air temperature.

This view from the left Navigation Camera (Navcam) of NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity looks back at wheel tracks made during the first drive away from the last science target in the "Glenelg" area.

This view of the two moons of Mars comes from a set of images taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity as the larger moon, Phobos, passed in front of the smaller one, Deimos, from Curiosity's perspecti...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life, is in development for a launch opportunity in 2009.

Tom Rivellini of the entry, descent and landing team gives a big thumbs up upon Curiosity's successful landing on Mars.

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 ...

This view of a Martian rock slab called "Old Soaker," which has a network of cracks that may have originated in drying mud, comes from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. It w...

This set of images shows the movement of the rear right wheel of NASA's Curiosity as rover drivers turned the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars.

Mastcam 100: Longer Focal-Length Eye of Mast Camera Pair for Mars Rover

This graphic tracks the maximum relative humidity and the temperature at which that maximum occurred each Martian day, or sol, for about one-fourth of a Martian year, as measured by the Remote Envi...

Curiosity science team member William Dietrich explores the relationship between river fans found in California's Death Valley on Earth and similar fans in Gale Crater on Mars.