Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Jim Graf hugs Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Dr. Charles Elachi after a successful orbit insertion on March 10, 2006.

Valleys much younger than well-known ancient valley networks on Mars are evident near the informally named "Heart Lake" on Mars. This map presents color-coded topographical information overlaid ont...

With the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument just above his head, a technician at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center works on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft...

Getting a spacecraft to Mars is no walk in the park - as launch engineers are well aware. But when the spacecraft in question is among the largest ever sent to the red planet, there are specific ch...

It's not only when trying to find a scientifically interesting place to land that the high-resolution images from HiRISE come in handy: it's also to identify potential hazards within a landing elli...

How can you communicate with Mars spacecraft when the Sun is in the way? Learn more about 'solar conjunction' in this 60-second video.

This global map of Mars was acquired on July 31, 2012, by the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This image shows a portion of the central mound in the impact crater Gale that is of interest to scientists because it is composed of light-toned layered deposits. 

This image acquired on January 20, 2019 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a chaotic jumble of bright layered sediments, perhaps resulting from large landslides.

This image acquired on October 1, 2020 by NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows several craters in Arabia Terra filled with layered rock.

This image shows dunes near the north pole of Mars. The north pole is surrounded by a vast "sea" of basaltic sand dunes, and the dunes imaged here are similar to barchan dunes that are commonly fo...

This map of Mars shows relative locations of three types of findings related to salt or frozen water, plus a new type of finding that may be related to both salt and water.

This image from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows an impact scar on Mars made by pieces of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that the spacecraft shed just before entering the Mar...

This April 6, 2014, image from the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was taken as a follow-up to discovery of a possible 2012 impact scar in images from the orbiter's Mars Color ...

This image from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location associated with the novel and movie, "The Martian." It is the tale's planned landing site for the Ares 4 mis...

This graph shows a spectrum recorded by the Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

This March 20, 2014, image from the MARCI camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a dark spot (at center of inscribed rectangle) noticed while the image was being examined for a weather re...

These images from orbit show an area near Mars' south pole where coalescing or elongated pits are interpreted as signs that an underlying deposit of frozen carbon dioxide, or "dry ice," has been sh...

Sand dunes such as those seen in this image have been observed to creep slowly across the surface of Mars through the action of the wind.

Back-and-forth blinking of this two-image animation shows movement of a sand dune on Mars. The images are part of a study published by Nature on May 9, 2012, reporting movement of Martian sand dune...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been working on Mars since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time; evening of Jan. 24, Pacific Standard Time).

This view of a portion of the Eridania region of Mars shows blocks of deep-basin deposits that have been surrounded and partially buried by younger volcanic deposits. The image was taken by the Con...

This unnamed impact crater is about 8 kilometers in diameter and contains numerous gullies.

What is this enigmatic landform?

This map shows five locations where fresh impact cratering has excavated water ice from just beneath the surface of Mars (sites 1 through 5) and the Viking Lander 2 landing site (VL2), in the conte...