Alignment on December 24, 2007

A crane lifts the 106.5-foot-long first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission through the open door of the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Compl...

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...

The sand dunes on Earth sometimes resemble those on Mars. However, Martian dunes are many times larger than those we see on Earth. This image shows engineers seeking out the best place to test dr...

At the bottom of this valley, called Gediz Vallis, is a mound of boulders and debris that are believed to have been swept there by wet landslides billions of years ago. The rover team hopes to get ...

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...

Prominent mineral veins at the "Garden City" site examined by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover vary in thickness and brightness, as seen in this image from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam). The image c...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the fairing acoustic protection (FAP) system lining the inside of the Atlas V payload fairing for NASA's Mars ...

The drill bit of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover over one of the sample inlets on the rover's deck. The inlets lead to Curiosity's onboard laboratories. This image was taken on Sol 2068 by the rover's ...

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

Mercury passed in front of the sun on June 3, 2014, as viewed from Mars. The Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded the event. (No audio)

This oblique view of the mound in Gale crater shows several different rock types of interest to the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

This is the first image taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT).

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 ...

This engineering animation depicts the moves that NASA's rover Curiosity made on Sept. 22, 2012, when the rover touched a Martian rock with its robotic arm for the first time. Curiosity examined th...

A web of shadows stretches across the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket as the early morning sun shines through a metal lightning mast (left) at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Ca...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning" after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its w...

This image from the right Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows roughly spherical features.

NASA's NEOWISE mission detected comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on July 28, 2014, less than three months before this comet's close flyby of Mars on Oct. 19. This merging of multiple images presents t...

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day. Blue, orange, and green color was added to a combination of both pano...

A green star marks the location of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover after a drive on the mission's 957th Martian day, or sol, (April 16, 2015). The map covers an area about 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) wide.

This graphic depicts paths by which carbon has been exchanged among Martian interior, surface rocks, polar caps, waters and atmosphere, and also depicts a mechanism by which it is lost from the atm...

This stereo panoramic view combines 14 images taken by the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity during the mission's 120th Martian day, or sol (Dec. 7, 2012).

This oblique view of Gale crater shows the landing site and the mound of layered rocks that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will investigate.

John Grotzinger, Curiosity's principal investigator, narrates an aerial tour of the rover's past, present and future traverses on the Red Planet.

This diagram presents some of the processes and clues related to a long-ago lake on Mars that became stratified, with the shallow water richer in oxidants than deeper water was.