Desolate Landscape

A ceremonial ribbon is cut for the opening of new "Destination: Mars" experience at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex in Florida.

This graph shows the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Mars, as measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station on NASA's Curiosity rover.

This grouping of two test rovers and a flight spare provides a graphic comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The setting is ...

This May 22, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the "Marias Pass" area where a lower and older geological unit of mudstone -- the pale zone in the center...

This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, taken on April 3, 2014, includes a bright spot near the upper left corner. Possible explanations include a glint from a rock or a cosmic-ray hit.

When the Martian Moon Phobos passed in front of the sun, from the perspective of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, the rover recorded the eclipse in the sky as well as the shadow darkening the ground. (...

After four years on Mars, Curiosity rover and her operations team are now seasoned explorers, anxious to climb to greater heights on Mount Sharp.

This chart illustrates how NASA's Curiosity rover talks to Earth. While the rover can send direct messages, it communicates more efficiently with the help of spacecraft in orbit, including NASA's O...

If the atmosphere of Mars contains methane, various possibilities have been proposed for where the methane could come from and how it could disappear.

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 viewed sloping buttes and layered outcrops as it exited the "Murray Buttes" region on lower Mount Sharp, Sept. 9, 2016.

Stitched together from 28 images, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view from "Greenheugh Pediment" on April 9, 2020, the 2,729th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In the foreground is t...

Clouds can be seen drifting across the Martian sky in an 8-frame movie made using images from a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover. The images were taken on Dec. 12, 2021, the 3,325th ...

Amanda Steffy and Rob Sullivan help shape a course of sand ripples for the Scarecrow rover to drive over. This test was done in the Dumont Dunes in California's Mojave Desert, near Death Valley.

The rover took a 360-degree panorama of the area depicting its last drill hole on the ridge (at a location called "Rock Hall").

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity heads on the long journey to the mission's main destination, Mount Sharp.

This set of views illustrates capabilities of the Mast Camera (MastCam) instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover, using a scene on Earth as an example of what MastCam's two camer...

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...

A group of engineers and technicians prepare to mate the rover (tucked inside its backshell and turned upside-down on the left) to its protective heatshield, the black disk on the right.

This view southeastward from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) shows terrain judged difficult for traversing between the rover and an outcrop in the middle distance where a pale rock unit meets a d...

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).

The red "X" marks the spot where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars.

The left-front wheel of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows dents and holes in this image taken during the 469th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Nov. 30, 2013).

This pair of images from the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the upper portion of a wind-blown deposit dubbed "Rocknest."

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