Mars Surface Exploration

Images showcasing the Martian landscape, including trenches and craters, with a focus on rocky terrain and the horizon from various spacecraft missions.

Lumpy Rock Dubbed 'Wopmay' and Dune, Mars, From Rover Opportunity
Lumpy Rock Dubbed 'Wopmay' and Dune, Mars, From Rover Opportunity
172 assets in this story
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Curiosity rover. Computer artwork of the Mars Science Laboratory MSL mission rover, Curiosity, on the Martian surface.
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Heatshield on the Horizon
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Explorers don pressure suits and leave the safety of their climate-controlled motor home to examine an outcrop of sedimentary rock on a martian dune field
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This artist rendition is of the Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) Lander. InSight proposes to place a single geophysical lander on Mars to study its deep interior.
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Insight Mars exploring the surface of red planet Insight Mars exploring the surface of red planet Copyright: xZoonar.com/StanislavxRishnyakx 14993682
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This Jan. 13, 2015, view from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows outcomes of a mini-drill test to assess whether the 'Mojave' rock is appropriate for full-depth drilling to collect a sample.
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About 4 billion years ago an asteroid or comet collided with Mars creating what is known today as the Argyre impact basin in the southern highlands
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This view of Shark was produced by combining the 'Super Panorama' frames from the IMP camera.
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An artist's depiction of the close pass of comet C/2013 A1 over the Martian landscape. Also known as comet Siding Spring, which is the Australian observatory that discovered the object, it is scheduled to pass by Mars in October of 2014. Rover image courtesy of NASA.
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This high-resolution image shows a computer-generated model of Spirit's lander at Gusev Crater as engineers and scientists would have expected to see it from a perfect overhead view.
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Elysium Mons Volcanic Region
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SpaceX Starship on Mars
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Martian Terrain
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S70-29505 (13-18 Feb. 1970) --- A prototype of the modular equipment transporter (MET), nicknamed the Rickshaw after its shape and method of propulsion. This equipment was used by the Apollo 14 astronauts during their geological and lunar surface simulation training in the Pinacate volcanic area of northwestern Sonora, Mexico. The Apollo 14 crew will be the first one to use the MET. It will be a portable workbench with a place for the lunar hand tools and their carrier, three cameras, two sample container bags, a special environmental sample container, spare film magazines, and a lunar surface Penetrometer.
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ASI/MET Shadow & Airbags
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This artist's concept depicts the stationary NASA Mars lander known by the acronym InSight at work studying the interior of Mars. InSight is scheduled to launch in March 2016.
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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called 'Santa Maria,' which has a diameter about the length of a football field. This scene looks eastward across the crater.
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This color image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows an area excavated by the blast of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent stage rocket engines. This is part of a larger, high-resolution color mosaic made from images obtained by Curiosity's Mast Camera.
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Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's Empty Nest on Mars
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Recovering Spirit Sets Sight on Cake
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'Et-Then' is located near the rover's front left wheel, where the rover has been stationed while scooping soil at the site called 'Rocknest' in this image from NASA's Curiosity spacecraft.
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In this image from NASA's Curiosity rover, a rock outcrop called 'Link' pops out from a Martian surface that is elsewhere blanketed by reddish-brown dust.
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This image shows the target landing area for Curiosity, the rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. The target, called 'Mount Sharp,' is near the foot of a mountain inside Gale Crater.
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Still Shining After All This Time (Polar)
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This image shows inclined beds characteristic of delta deposits where a stream entered a lake, but at a higher elevation and farther south than other delta deposits north of Mount Sharp.
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This mid-afternoon, 360-degree panorama was acquired by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on April 4, 2016, as part of long-term campaign to document the context and details of the geology and landforms along Curiosity's traverse inside Gale Crater.
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This view of the calibration target for the MAHLI camera aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images taken by that camera during Sept. 9, 2012. Part of Curiosity's left-front and center wheels and a patch of Martian ground are also visible.
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This image from the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock called 'Chocolate Hills,' which the rover found and examined at the edge of a young crater called 'Concepcin.'
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This still image illustrates what the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will look like as it rolls off the northeastern side of the lander on Mars. The image was taken from footage of rover testing at JPL's In-Situ Instruments Laboratory, or 'Testbed.'
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Snow White Trench Prepared for Sample Collection
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Crystal skull and Maya pyramid, computer artwork.
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Opportunity Mars exploring the surface of red planet Oppotunity Mars exploring the surface of red planet. Elements of this image furnished by NASA Copyright: xZoonar.com/StanislavxRishnyakx 15698740
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While NASA's InSight spacecraft landed on Mars, thrusters on the bottom of the spacecraft churned up the soil beneath it. This image shows pits that the thrusters excavated. This image was taken Dec. 14, 2018, the 18th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, using the Instrument Deployment Camera on InSight's robotic arm.
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The United States Flag Stands On The Surface Of Mars
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STS030-08-006 (4-8 May 1989) --- Though this scene first appears to be a stereographic picture, it's twin-panel effect is actually due to the framing by Atlantis' overhead cabin windows. The 35mm scene is over Africa and shows the border area of Zambia and Angola. The frame is one of twenty released by NASA following the successful four-day STS-30 mission.
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This color full-resolution image showing the heat shield of NASA's Curiosity rover was obtained during descent to the surface of Mars.
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This image shows the deflated airbags retracted underneath the lander petal at the JPL In-Situ Instrument Laboratory.
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Examination of a calcium sulfate vein called 'Diyogha' by the Chemical and ChemCam instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover found boron, sodium and chlorine.
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A screen shot from software used by the Mars Exploration Rover team for assessing movements by Spirit and Opportunity illustrates the degree to which Spirit's wheels have become embedded in soft material at the location called 'Troy.'
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An artist's concept of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flying through the Red Planet's skies. Ingenuity, a technology experiment, will be the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet. It will arrive on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, attached to the belly of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Ingenuity is expected to attempt its first flight test in spring 2021.
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Thrusters under NASA's InSight lander churned up soil during landing on Mars. This image shows two pits excavated by the thrusters.
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This artist's concept of a proposed NASA and European Space Agency collaboration on proposals for a Mars sample return mission portrays a series of six steps (A through F) in the spacecraft's landing on Mars.
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Conductivity Probe Inserted in Martian Soil, Sol 46
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Titan's Surface
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This picture shows a model of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit being tested for performance on five wheels at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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Known Locations of Carbonate Rocks on Mars
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This photograph shows the Vehicle System Test Bed (VSTB) rover, a nearly identical copy to the Curiosity rover on Mars.
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NASA's InSight spacecraft, its heat shield and its parachute were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In images released today, the three new features on the Martian landscape appear teal. That's not their actual color Light reflected off their surfaces cause the color to be saturated. The ground around the lander is dark, blasted by its retrorockets during descent. Look carefully for a butterfly shape, and you can make out the lander's solar panels on either side. Unannotated, individual images of the lander, heat shield and parachute are also available.
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old rusted metal well in desert
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Deflated Airbags and Petal in 360-degree panorama
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An artist's impression of InSight's Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL). InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. The mission is the first outer space explorer to study the inner space of Mars. The lander probes deep beneath the surface of Mars to study the fingerprints of the processes that first formed the rocky planets of our solar system. Entry, descent, and landing (EDL) begins when the spacecraft reaches the Martian atmosphere, about 80 miles (about 128 kilometers) above the surface, and ends with the lander safe and sound on the surface of Mars six minutes later.
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Phoenix's Workspace
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During a field test in the Mojave Desert, the DuAxel robot separates into two single-axled robots so that one can rappel down a slope too steep for conventional rovers. The tether connecting both Axels not only allows the one robot to descend the slope while the other remains anchored in place, it also provides power and a means of communication with the anchoring robot above. The DuAxel project is a technology demonstration being developed by roboticists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to see how this unconventional rover might fill a niche in the exploration the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
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Dust on Mars: Before and After (Opportunity)
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Belly Dancing on Mars
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A flying saucer flying over craters on the moon.
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December 13, 2007 - NASA's new lunar truck prototype, seen here in the Lunar Yard at Johnson Space Center, was designed to explore the options NASA has in lunar rovers. Its six wheels, active suspension and rotating driver's stand will be compared to the four wheels and driver's seats of more traditional rovers as plans are made for lunar exploration.
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Haughton-Mars Project -
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This series of images from a navigation camera aboard NASA's Perseverance rover shows a gust of wind sweeping dust across the Martian plain beyond the rover's tracks on June 18, 2021 (the 117th sol, or Martian day, of the mission). The dust cloud in this GIF was estimated to be about 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers) in size; it was the first such Martian wind-lifted dust cloud of this scale ever captured in images. This image has been enhanced in order to show maximal detail, with some color distortion. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from
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NASA's InSight Mars lander uses a seismometer to study the inner layers of Mars. Seismic signals from quakes change as they pass through different kinds of materials; seismologists can read the squiggles of a seismogram to study the properties of the planet's crust, mantle, and core. This infographic shows those layers, and how InSight uses quakes to study them. It also shows a close-up of InSight and the major sources of marsquakes. Most quakes are created by heat and pressure inside the planet, which cause rock to fracture; another source is meteors striking the surface.
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The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features, approved names of 14 surface features on Pluto in August 2017. The names were proposed by NASA's New Horizons team following the first reconnaissance of Pluto and its moons by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The names, listed below, pay homage to the underworld mythology, pioneering space missions, historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in exploration, and scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Tombaugh Regio honors Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997), the U.S. astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930 from Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Burney crater honors Venetia Burney (1918-2009), who as an 11-year-old schoolgirl suggested the name Pluto for Clyde Tombaugh's newly discovered planet. Later in life she taught mathematics and economics. Sputnik Planitia is a large plain named for Sputnik 1, the first space satellite, l
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Humans on Mars, artwork. An illustration of a pair of legs on the surface of the red planet, perhaps belonging to future astronauts - or tourists. A...
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This close-up image shows the first target NASA's Curiosity rover aims to zap with its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument. The instrument will analyze that spark with a telescope and identify the chemical elements in the target.
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K-10 'Red' planetary rover in the Nasa Ames Marscape operations tests at Marscape (Ames Mars Yard) with remote operations from Ames Future Flight Centeral (FFC) Simulator,.
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K-10 'Red' planetary rover in the Nasa Ames Marscape operations tests at Marscape (Ames Mars Yard) with remote operations from Ames Future Flight Centeral (FFC) Simulator,.
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A Geologist's Treasure Trove
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Life in universe isometric composition with astronauts in spacesuits working outside facility on another planet vector illustration . Astronauts On Planet Isometric Composition
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Telescope, Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA, North America
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Hazelnuts Falling in Black Chocolate Powder
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This image of terrain inside Mars' Gale Crater and the calibration target for Mastcam on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity illustrate how false color can be used to make differences more evident in the materials in the scene.