Gale Crater

This video (part 3 of a 4 part series) shows engineers testing a new parachute in the largest wind tunnel on Earth for the Curiosity rover prior to its landing on August 2012.

A view from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on April 8, 2015, catches sight of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover passing through a valley called "Artist's Drive" on the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

President Barack Obama talks on the phone with NASA's Curiosity Mars rover team aboard Air Force One during a flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, Aug. 13, 2012.

During pre-flight testing in March 2011, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the MAHLI calibration target under illumination from MAHLI's two ...

The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite will weigh about 83 pounds (38 kilograms) and make up about half the science payload of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. It is a suite of three inst...

Soar over the crater on Mars that will be the landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, or sol (April 15, 2015), from the rover's location in Gale Crater.

Engineers test the first-of-its-kind landing system on NASA's next Mars rover.

The Laser-Induced Remote Sensing for Chemistry and Micro-Imaging instrument will identify atomic elements in martian rocks. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/J.-L. Lacour, CEA

With a unique view taken from inside Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, an overhead crane lifts the Centaur upper stage for the...

This animation shows NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flying over NASA's Curiosity (shown in pink) as the rover lands on the Red Planet. The video is slowed down as the orbiter approaches the lan...

A "scarecrow" rover at NASA's JPL drives over a sensor while testing a new driving algorithm. Engineers created the algorithm to reduce wheel wear on the Mars Curiosity rover.

The Curiosity rover is a big nerd at heart, fitted with a science lab to take in the planet Mars. Get the inside scoop on the mission’s many discoveries and dramas after a decade on the Red Planet.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team in the MSL Mission Support Area react after learning the Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars and images start coming in at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory...

This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.

Curiosity captured this vista using the left black-and-white navigation camera mounted on its mast, or “head,” on Feb. 1, 2024, the 4,084th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The panorama is made...

On Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, the 197-foot-tall United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rolls to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41.

This picture shows the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer used on the Mars Exploration Rovers. The improved APXS instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory rover would be able to detect elemental com...

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and its tracks are visible in this view combining information from three observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Re...

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 43rd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Sept. 19, 2012).

An artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (left) serves to compare it with Spirit, one of NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers.

This mosaic shows various scenes captured from a location called "Housedon Hill" by the ChemCam instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover between September 9 and October 23, 2020 (Sols 2878 and...

The ChemCam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover examined a brushed area on target rock "Christmas Cove" on Sept. 17, 2017, and found spectral evidence of hematite, an iron-oxide mineral. Five lines on t...

This image of a calibration target illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the Mars Hand Lens I0he robotic arm of NASA's Mars r...

Curiosity performs the first investigation of active sand dunes on another planet. Studying the Bagnold Dunes on Mars will help scientists understand the physics of Martian dunes and how they move.