Dunes Obstacle Course

NASA's Curiosity has determined the age of a Martian rock and provided first readings of radiation on the surface of Mars.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has clocked more than a decade of service at the Red Planet and has yielded scientific discoveries and magnificent views of a distant world. These images taken by...

A panorama combining images from both cameras of the Mastcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows diverse geological textures on Mount Sharp. Three years after landing on Mars, the mission is inves...

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.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this 360-degree panorama while atop “Mont Mercou,” a rock formation that offered a view into Gale Crater below. 

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, largest of the 10 science instruments for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, will examine samples of Martian rocks, soil and atmosphere for inform...

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sections of an Atlas V rocket payload fairing engulf NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) as they close in aro...

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

A group of journalists take part in a field trip to learn about the clues hidden in the rock layers with Curiosity Project Scientist, John Grotzinger.

This graphic maps locations of the sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected its first 18 rock or soil samples for laboratory analysis inside the vehicle. It also presents images of the dri...

Stitched together from 116 images, this view captured by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the path it will take in the summer of 2020 as it drives toward the next region it will be investigating, ...

Chile's Atacama Desert is the driest place on Earth -- and a ready analog for Mars' rugged, arid terrain.

This 3D, or stereo anaglyph, view shows the upcoming science destination for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, a region dubbed "Glenelg," where three different types of material seen from orbit come tog...

A regional dust storm visible in the southern hemisphere of Mars in this nearly global mosaic of observations made by the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 25, 2012.

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 movie clip shows Phobos, the larger of the two moons of Mars, passing in front of the other Martian moon, Deimos, on Aug. 1, from the perspective of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

This northeast-facing view from the lower edge of the pale "Pahrump Hills" outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp includes wind-sculpted ripples of sand and dust in the middle ground. It was taken by C...

This image maps the traverse of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity from "Bradbury Landing" to "Yellowknife Bay," with an inset documenting a change in the ground's thermal properties with arrival at a dif...

Curiosity remains busy on Mars by checking out her instruments and getting ready for her first test drive.

Michael Malin, left, principal investigator for three science cameras on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, comments to a news reporter during tests with Curiosity's mobility-test stand-in, Scarecrow, on...

The development of the Mars rover Curiosity's capabilities for drilling into a rock on Mars required years of development work.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used two cameras to create this selfie in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall. The panorama is made up of 60 images from the MAHLI c...

A crane is attached to the first stage of the Atlas V rocket for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission upon its arrival at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 on Cap...

This image shows laser plasmas in a test lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., under typical atmospheric pressures on Earth and Mars.

This view shows nodules exposed in sandstone that is part of the Stimson geological unit on Mount Sharp, Mars. The nodules can be seen to consist of grains of sand cemented together.