Mars Science Laboratory Stacked Spacecraft

The yellow triangles on this graph indicate concentrations of the elements titanium and silicon in selected rock targets with high silica content analyzed by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (...

This image shows an example of a thin-laminated, evenly stratified rock type that occurs in the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars. The Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rove...

This GIF shows clouds drifting over Mount Sharp on Mars, as viewed by NASA’s Curiosity rover on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Each frame of the scene was stitched...

Technicians at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, prepare the heat shield for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, in this April 2011 photo. With a diameter of 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet), this heat...

This pair of images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rock target "Cumberland" before and after Curiosity drilled into it to collect a sample for analy...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in December 2016, which is in the upper half of a geological unit cal...

The rock "Ithaca" shown here, with a rougher lower texture and smoother texture on top, appears to be a piece of the local sedimentary bedrock protruding from the surrounding soil in Gale Crater.

The Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity detects even very small amounts of water in the ground beneath the rover, primarily water bound into the crystal struc...

This video steps viewers through a portion of the choreography needed to land NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. It starts with a computer simulation from NASA's Eyes on the Solar System program and ...

These images from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show several impact scars on Mars made by pieces of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that the spacecraft shed just before entering ...

At different locations on the surface of the same rock, scientists can use the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity to measure the amount of reflected light at a series of different...

This diagram and the one at PIA16916 illustrate how the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover detects hydrogen in the ground beneath the rover.

This set of images compares a black-and-white image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to a color image obtained by the Mars Desc...

This mosaic, taken with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the planned route (in yellow) of NASA's Curiosity rover from "Pah...

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...

During pre-flight testing in March 2011, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the MAHLI calibration target under illumination from MAHLI's two ...

This image shows the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate.

This image produced from software used for planning drives of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity depicts the location and size of the rover when it was driven into position for drilling into rock target "...

These two signature microchips (circled in red) carry 1.2 million names submitted from the public.

This global map of Mars was acquired on Aug. 5, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

Scarecrow is a full-scale version of Curiosity, but without the “brains.” Engineers use it to test drive on different types of terrain. In this image, the rover was taken out to the Dumont Dunes in...

This subframe image from the left Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the covers in place over two sample inlet funnels of the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrumen...

“Selfie” of the Curiosity rover with inset showing the SAM instrument prior to installation on the rover. 

This full-resolution image from NASA's Curiosity shows the elbow joint of the rover's extended robotic arm on Aug. 20, 2012. The Navigation Camera captured this view.