Dr. Bill Boynton

The floor of this crater in Terra Sirenum contains layered material. The layered sedimentary material on Mars is arguably the most interesting and compelling material on the planet. These layers mo...

In Ares Vallis, teardrop mesas extend like pennants behind impact craters, where the raised rocky rims diverted the floods and protected the ground from erosion.

Valles Marineris, the "Grand Canyon of Mars," sprawls wide enough to reach from Los Angeles to nearly New York City, if it were located on Earth. The red outline box shows the location of a second,...

This image shows two small tributaries, just east of where they join Shalbatana Vallis.

A large dust storm on Mars, nearly twice the size of the United States, covered the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet in early January 2022, leading to some of NASA’s explorers on the surface h...

Snow falls and ice and frost form on Mars, too. NASA's spacecraft on and orbiting the Red Planet reveal the similarities to and differences from how we experience winter on Earth.  

A new map of Mars' gravity made with three NASA spacecraft is the most detailed to date, providing a revealing glimpse into the hidden interior of the Red Planet. Satellites always orbit a planet's...

Sand-laden jets shoot into the polar sky in this view by noted space artist Ron Miller.

Morning clouds fill Coprates Chasma on Mars in this Nov. 25, 2015, image from the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey. No orbiter systematically observed Mars in morning sunlight before 2015. The ...

This unusual view of the horizon of Mars was captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter using its THEMIS camera, in an operation that took engineers three months to plan. It’s taken from about 250 miles ab...

Seen shortly after local Martian sunrise, clouds gather in the summit pit, or caldera, of Pavonis Mons, a giant volcano on Mars, in this image from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on N...

This is a Mars Odyssey visible color image of an unnamed crater in western Arcadia Planitia (near 39 degrees N, 179 degrees E). The crater shows a number of interesting internal and external featur...

THEMIS Support for Landing Site Selection

The dunes and dust devil tracks in this VIS image are located on the plains of Planum Chronium.

This lunar-like scene occurs along the southeastern rim of the Isidis Planitia basin. The Isidis basin is an ancient impact crater some 1200 km across that is found along the boundary separating th...

A dust storm continues to envelop the Red Planet and Curiosity’s labs are back in action.

Getting to Mars is difficult enough -- staying there is even more challenging. Odyssey met up with Mars on October 24 02:26 UTC (October 23: 7:26 p.m. PDT/10:26 p.m.EDT).

The floor of this unnamed crater in Aonia Terra has been filled with multiple layers of material.

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

Download a PDF of the Explore Mars Sticker.

This crater, located in Chryse Planitia, is relatively unmodified, meaning it appears very much like it did when it first formed.

This color-coded map indicates the depth to icy layers at a site in southern Mars. The dense, icy layer retains heat better than the looser soil above it, so where the icy layer is closer to the su...

Wind shadow and real shadow combine to give a striking image of a comet.

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

Geological faulting has opened cracks in the Cerberus region that slice through flat plains and mesas alike.