Desolate Landscape

This set of images compares rocks seen by NASA's Opportunity rover and Curiosity rover at two different parts of Mars.

Time-lapse movie of the NASA Mars Curiosity rover's last days in the clean room before being shipped to Florida for launch. (Audio: music only)

A sweeping panorama combining 33 telephoto images into one Martian vista presents details of several types of terrain visible on Mount Sharp from a location along the route of NASA's Curiosity Mars...

Engineers put the rover through a human-made earthquake to make sure nothing breaks on its trip to Mars.

A close-up view of a microchip with 1.2 million names that will be placed aboard NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover. Engineers etched the names onto a silicon wafer or microchip. They used an electron be...

Researchers used the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover to gain this detailed view of layers in "Vera Rubin Ridge" from just below the ridge. The scene combines 70 images taken with the Mastcam...

In this image, the car-size rover is in the middle of the picture with several team members surrounding it. The team members are all dressed in special head-to-toe white suits, called 'bunny suits....

This patch of Martian bedrock, about 2 feet (70 centimeters) across, is finely layered rock with some pea-size inclusions. It lies near the lowest point of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop, which forms ...

Scientists and engineers scour the Dumont Dunes area and look for the best spot to practice driving with the Scarecrow rover.

Out of more than 30 sites considered as possible landing targets for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, by November 2008 four of the most intriguing places on Mars rose to the final round of t...

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...

This image of a calibration target illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the Mars Hand Lens I0he robotic arm of NASA's Mars r...

Mars has two small, asteroid-sized moons named Phobos and Deimos.

The Entry, Descent and Landing team gathers to celebrate prior to a post-landing press briefing.

This image shows where NASA's Curiosity rover aimed two different instruments to study a pyramid-shaped rock known as "Jake Matijevic."

Scarecrow, a mobility-testing model for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, easily traverses large rocks in the Mars Yard testing area at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately ...

This map shows the location of "Cumberland," the second rock-drilling target for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, in relation to the rover's first drilling target, "John Klein," within the southwestern...

This image shows the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Curiosity wraps up an investigation at Pink Cliffs while trying out a style of exploration used by geologists on Earth called "the walkabout."

Checking Contact Points for Curiosity's Drill

NASA's Curiosity rover takes a short breather on her trek to Glenelg to check out her arm instruments.

At the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the "back shell powered descent vehicle" configuration, containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curio...

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...

An etched version of Leonardo da Vinci's self-portrait on the Microchip to be placed aboard NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover.