Mars Exploration Rover team members with rover

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

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been on the western rim of Endeavour Crater in Meridiani Planum for about two years. Until May 2013, it was investigating sedimentary layers that are ...

Artist's concept of controlling the rover from Earth, scientists drive the rover along Mars' surface inspecting geological features.

This view from Opportunity shows the tracks left by a drive executed with more onboard autonomy than has been used on any other drive by a Mars rover.

The circular shapes seen on the martian surface in these images are "footprints" left by Opportunity's airbags during landing as the spacecraft gently rolled to a stop.

Road trip! This compilation of images from hazard-avoidance cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between January 2004 and April 2015 shows the rover's-eye-view of the Martian marath...

This oblique view with moderate vertical exaggeration shows the portion of the rim of Endeavour crater given the informal name "Spirit Point." This is the location where the team operating NASA's ...

While driving eastward toward the northwestern flank of "McCool Hill," Spirit's wheels churned up the largest amount of bright soil discovered so far in the mission.

The nose cone of the rocket separates during the launch phase and the Mars Exploration Rover is sent on a seven-month journey to Mars.

As NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity neared the ninth anniversary of its landing on Mars, the rover was working in the 'Matijevic Hill' area seen in this view from Opportunity's panoramic c...

Protected by large airbags, the lander falls away from the parachute, landing safely on Mars.

This 360-degree panorama shows "Endurance Crater" and the surrounding plains of Meridiani Planum.

A crowd of excited men and women who work on the Mars Exploration Rover mission are wearing white paper 3-D glasses with red and blue lenses to view some of the Spirit rover's first three-dimension...

This stunning image features the heat shield impact site of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

With a model of NASA's Opportunity rover behind him, John Callas, project manager of the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, speaks about the rovers' achievements at the agency's Jet Propulsion Lab...

This false-color view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows "Lunokhod 2 Crater," which lies south of Solander Point on the west rim of Endeavour Crater.

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.

Researchers used the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to capture this 10-second-exposure view of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring as it passed near Mars on Oct. 1...

An oblique, northward-looking view based on stereo orbital imaging, shows the location of Opportunity on its journey from Cape York to Solander Point when HiRISE took the new color image.

At a rock called "Clovis," the rock abrasion tool on Spirit cut a 9-millimeter (0.35-inch) hole. To the right of the drill hole is a "brush flower" of circles produced by scrubbing the surface of...

This cylindrical-projection view was created from navigation camera images that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit acquired on sol 122 (May 7, 2004).

This map show a portion of Endeavour Crater's western rim that includes the "Marathon Valley" area investigated intensively by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2015 and 2016, and a flu...

This image hows several dust devils moving from right to left across a plain inside Mars' Gusev Crater, as seen from the vantage point of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in hills rising from t...

This full-circle, stereo panorama shows the terrain around the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during the 3,105th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Oct. 18, 2012).

This false color image suggests that the plains beyond the small crater where the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity now sits are littered with the same dark grey material found inside the crater i...