Mars Science Laboratory Stacked Spacecraft

NASA's Curiosity rover finds calcium deposits on Mars similar to those seen on Earth when water circulates in cracks and rock fractures.

This view from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the arm of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows texture within a light-toned vein at a site called "Garden City" on lower Mount Sharp.

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

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this sequence of views of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater.

Modern-day Mars experiences cyclical changes in climate and, consequently, ice distribution. Unlike Earth, the obliquity (or tilt) of Mars changes substantially on timescales of hundreds of thousan...

A separate electronics box will allow the Mastcam to process images independently of the main rover computer system. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Teachers gather at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., for the Curiosity Landing Educator Workshop.

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powdered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis.

This image shows the first holes drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity at Mount Sharp.

This pair of graphs shows about one-fourth of a Martian year's record of temperatures (in degrees Celsius) measured by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover.

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...

Left and right eyes of the Navigation Camera (Navcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took the dozens of images combined into this stereo scene of the rover and its surroundings. The component image...

This series of pie charts shows similarities and differences in the mineral composition of mudstone at 10 sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected rock-powder samples and analyzed them wit...

This view shows the path and some key places in a survey of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in autumn of 2014.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the camera on its arm on July 12, 2014, to catch the first images of sparks produced by the rover's laser being shot at a rock on Mars. The left image is from befo...

Tracks from the first drives of NASA's Curiosity rover are visible in this image captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Patches of Martian sandstone visible in the lower-left and upper portions of this view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover have a knobbly texture due to nodules apparently...

The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this mosaic as it explored the "clay-bearing unit" on Feb. 3, 2019 (Sol 2309).

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars in its approach to and April 1, 2014, arrival at a waypoint called "the Kimberley," which rover team scientists chose in 2013 as the locatio...

This sequence of seven images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows wind-caused changes in the parachute of NASA's Mars Sci...

Mars Rover Photosynth

Download a PDF of the Mars Science Laboratory Launch Press Kit.

In this image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looking up the ramp at the northeastern end of "Hidden Valley," a pale outcrop including drilling target "Bonanza King" is at the center of the scene.

This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the first sample-collection hole drilled in Mount Sharp, the layered mountain that is the science desti...

This artist's still shows how NASA's Curiosity rover will communicate with Earth during landing.