Goal 4: Prepare for human exploration

NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in...

Eberswalde Crater

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has discovered lots of evidence of ancient lakes on the Red Planet – and this recent panorama shows intriguing new clues.

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 Jan. 19, 2016, self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at "Namib Dune," where the rover's activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of...

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 close-up image shows the first target NASA's Curiosity rover aims to zap with its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

This is a still from an interactive web feature that guides you through the entry, descent and landing of NASA's Curiosity rover.

In the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians guide the backshell as it is lowered over NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, Curiosity, f...

This 3D view of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was assembled from two images taken by that camera during the 34th Martian day, or so...

This view southeastward from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) shows terrain judged difficult for traversing between the rover and an outcrop in the middle distance where a pale rock unit meets a d...

This May 5, 2014, image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows two holes at top center drilled into a sandstone target called "Windjana." The farther hole was created by th...

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...

This head-on view shows the tip of the drill bit on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

Meet some of the women team members and hear about the exciting and challenging jobs they do in science and engineering while working with Mars rover Curiosity.

Goal 2: Characterize the climate of Mars

This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012.

The Curiosity rover mission to Mars is one of NASA's most complex and incredible successes. This 45-second trailer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory takes you from designing and testing the rover ...

These two views from NASA’s Curiosity rover, acquired specifically to measure the amount of dust inside Gale Crater, show that dust has increased over three days from a major Martian dust storm.

Late last night, in the morning hours of Aug. 6, as NASA's Curiosity rover fell to the surface of Mars, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured an image of the rover gliding on its parach...

This view of a Martian rock called "Rocknest 3" combines four images taken by the right-eye camera of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument, which has a telephoto, 100-millimeter-focal-length lens.

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars in its approach to and April 1, 2014, arrival at a waypoint called "the Kimberley," which rover team scientists chose in 2013 as the locatio...

The hills and troughs in this little valley, carved between a ridge and cliffs higher up Mount Sharp, almost look like undulating waves. The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover cap...

This image graphs four gases released ("evolved") when powdered rock from the target rock "Cumberland" was heated inside the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity Mars ...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of "Marker Band Valley" at two times of day on April 8. Color was added to a combination of both panoram...