Gale Crater

Two spacecraft engineers join a grouping of vehicles providing a comparison of three generations of Mars rovers developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The setting is JPL's ...

On Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket arrives on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex-41, situated near the Atlantic Ocean.

What’s the latest news from Mars? A global dust storm is starting to settle, but still obscures the Martian surface; Curiosity turns six and drills a new rock sample; InSight is more than halfway t...

This image is from a series of test images to calibrate the 34-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover. It was taken on Aug. 23, 2012 and looks south-southwest from the rover's landing site.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the "Bradbury Landing" location where it landed in August 2012 to the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop where it drilled into the lowest pa...

This is how AEGIS sees the Martian surface. All targets found by the A.I. program are outlined: blue targets are rejected, while red are retained. The top-ranked target is shaded green; if there's ...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the "Bradbury Landing" location where it landed in August 2012 to the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop where it drilled into the lowest pa...

Clara Ma (in front) with Suparna Mukherjee, Julie Townsend, Jaime Waydo (in back row) are featured here in the laboratory where an engineering model of the next Mars rover, Curiosity, is being test...

Download a coloring sheet of NASA MAVEN orbiter and Curiosity rover working together at Mars.

This computer-generated view based on multiple orbital observations shows Mars' Gale crater as if seen from an aircraft northwest of the crater.

This animation and still image of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring were taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover as the comet passed near the red planet on Oct. 19, 2014.

This view of the three left wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images that were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity'...

This image shows the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on NASA's Curiosity rover, with the Martian landscape in the background.

This chart graphs measurements made by the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity against the distance the rover has driven, in meters.

Engineers put the rover through a human-made earthquake to make sure nothing breaks on its trip to Mars.

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians process the heat shield for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL).

This sequence of images from the Front Hazard-Avoidance Camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows the rover drilling into rock target "Cumberland." The drilling was performed during the 279th Ma...

This cutaway view shows the internal chambers of the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device, attached to the turret at the end of the robotic arm on NASA's Curios...

This stereo view from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows a rock called "Link," which bears rounded pebbles that provide evidence about vigorous flow of water in a stream on ancient Mars.

Data graphed here from the Chemistry and Camera (CheMin) instrument on NASA's Mars Curiosity rover show a difference between clay minerals in powder drilled from mudstone outcrops at two locations ...

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 map traces where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove between landing at a site subsequently named "Bradbury Landing," and the position reached during the mission's 130th Martian day, or sol, (De...

This low-angle self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called "Buckskin." Bright powder from that July 30, ...

A NASA radio on Europe's Trace Gas Orbiter, which reached Mars in October 2016, has succeeded in its first test of receiving data from NASA Mars rovers, both Opportunity and Curiosity. This grap...

This computer-generated view based on multiple orbital observations shows Mars' Gale crater as if seen from an aircraft northwest of the crater.