MAVEN FAQs

Meet the 24th Martian sample collected by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover – "Comet Geyser," a sample taken from a region of Jezero Crater that is especially rich in carbonate, a mineral linked to ha...

This image is a stereo, panoramic view of various trenches dug by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. The images that make up this panorama were taken by Phoenix's Surface Stereo Imager at about 4 p.m., lo...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded this stereo view of the summit of "Cape Tribulation," on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, on the day before the rover drove to the top. The sc...

Perseverance snapped this view of a hill called “Santa Cruz” on April 29, 2021. About 20 inches (50 centimeters) across on average, the boulders in the foreground are among the type of rocks the ro...

The black speck circled in the lower left corner of this image is a cluster of recently formed craters spotted on Mars using a new machine-learning algorithm. This image was taken by the Context Ca...

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission reached a milestone in September 2011.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the permanent polar cap of Mars, encircled by sand dunes and looking like pulled threads. These dunes march across a fabric of pattern...

Inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers and technicians prepare the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft for enc...

This video includes a seismogram and sonification of the signals recorded by NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which detected a giant meteoroid strike on Dec. 24, 2021, the 1,094th Martian day, or sol, o...

This illustration shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars.

"Yogi" is a meter-size rock about 5 meters northwest of the Mars Pathfinder lander and was the second rock visited by the Sojourner Rover's alpha proton X-ray spectrometer (APXS) instrument. This v...

Aram Chaos is a heavily eroded impact crater that contains jumbled blocks of material disrupted when large quantities of ice or water were catastrophically removed. The light toned sediments may ha...

Download a PDF of the Spirit Poster.

An elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis," with a rock spire in it, dominates this stereo view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Members of NASA’s Mars Helicopter team attach a thermal film enclosure to the fuselage of the flight model (the actual vehicle going to the Red Planet). 

Episode one launches with Jennifer Trosper in the driver’s seat. As she looks in the rearview mirror at twenty-five years of exploring with NASA’s Mars rovers, she reveals how their progression has...

The shadow of NASA InSight's robotic arm moves over its heat probe, or "mole," on Nov. 3, 2019, the 333rd Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

Download a PDF of Curiosity's Pre-Landing Lithograph.

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 color image was acquired by the Surface Stereo Imager on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander on the 25th day of the mission, or Sol 24 (June 19, 2008).

This series of images shows carbon dioxide ice sublimating (going directly from a solid to a gas) inside a pit at Mars' south pole. Each frame of the animation was taken by the HiRISE camera on NAS...

The electricity for NASA's Mars 2020 rover is provided by a power system called a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG. The MMRTG will be inserted into the aft end of the r...

Image of MAVEN spacecraft, annotated to identify instruments

This image covers part of the floor of a large ancient impact crater, near the western rim.

Meet two of the Martian samples that have been collected and are awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. As of late June 2023, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has collec...