Small “flower” formation spotted by the Curiosity rover on Mars

Curiosity discovered this rock, less than a cent in size and resembling a flower or piece of coral in Gale Crater on February 24. The tiny fragments in this image were created billions of years ago when waterborne minerals cemented the rocks.

NASA’s Curiosity probe used two cameras to take this selfie in front of “Monte Mirco,” a 6-meter-high rock formation.

The hemisphere perspective in Valles Marineris on July 9, 2013 is actually a mosaic of 102 Viking Orbiter images. In the center is the Valles Marineris valley system, which is more than 2000 km long and up to 8 km deep.

This 2016 self-portrait shows the Curiosity Mars rover installed at the Quela drilling site in the Murray Buttes region at the base of Mount Sharp.

This image of a preserved river channel on Mars was taken by a satellite in orbit, with color overlays to show different altitudes. Blue is low and yellow is high.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission captured this 2018 image of the Korolev Crater, which is more than 80 kilometers wide and filled with water ice near the North Pole.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE camera to obtain this image of an area of ​​unusual texture on the south floor of Gale Crater.

The cooled lava helped maintain the footprint of dune movement across the southeastern region on Mars. But it also appears to be a “Star Trek” icon.

Although Mars is not as geologically active as Earth, its surface features are strongly shaped by winds. Wind-carved features like these, called yardangs, are common on the Red Planet. On the sand, the wind forms small ripples and sand dunes. In the thin atmosphere of Mars, the light is not scattered much, so the shadows cast by the garden are sharp and dark.

This small, hemite-rich concrete is located near Fram crater, which NASA’s Opportunity spacecraft visited in April 2004. The space shown is 1.2 inches wide. Image from the microscopy imaging device on Opportunity’s robotic arm, with color information added by the rover’s panoramic camera. These minerals indicate that Mars had a watery past.

This image shows the seasonal flows in Valles Marineris on Mars, called the Recurrent Slope Line, or RSL. These landslides appear on the slopes in the spring and summer.

Mars is known to have dust storms around the planet. These 2001 images from NASA’s Mars Global Survey orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet’s appearance as fog from dust storms spread to the global south.

This composite image, looking up Mount Sharp, was captured in September 2015 by NASA’s Curiosity spacecraft. In the foreground is a long chain filled with hematite. Behind it lies an undulating plain rich in clay minerals. Then there are many round mounds, all rich in sulfate minerals. The changing minerals in these layers indicate a changing environment in early Mars, though all of them were exposed to water billions of years ago.

InSight’s seismometer first recorded an ‘quake quake’ in April 2019.

From its position high on a hill, Opportunity captured this 2016 photo of the Martian dust devil writhing over the valley below. The view overlooks the rover trails leading to the north-facing escarpment of the Knudsen Mountains, which are part of the southern edge of Marathon Valley.

HiRISE captured stratigraphic sediments and clear ice sheets at the north pole of Mars.

Indigo Patera is a region on Mars where dunes and ripples move quickly. HiRISE, aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, continues to monitor this region every two months to see changes on seasonal and annual scales.

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured the highest resolution panorama of the surface of Mars in late 2019. This includes more than 1,000 images and 1.8 billion pixels.

This image, which collects data from two instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, shows an orbital image of Mars’ north pole. The ice-rich polar cap is 621 miles wide and its dark bands are deep basins. To the right of the center is a large valley, Chasma Boreale, which roughly divides the ice sheet. Chasma Boreale is located along the famous Grand Canyon in the United States, reaching a depth of two miles.

This image, taken by the HiRISE camera in November 2013, is dominated by an exciting new impact crater. The crater is nearly 100 feet (30 m) across and is surrounded by a large, radioactive eruption zone. Since the terrain in which the crater formed is dusty, the new crater appears blue in the enhanced image color, due to the removal of reddish dust in that area.

This dark hill, called Ireson Hill, is located in the Murray Formation at the base of Mount Sharp, near where NASA’s Curiosity spacecraft surveyed a linear sand dune in February 2017.

Is that cake and cream on Mars? No, it’s just polar dunes covered in ice and sand.

The cloud in the center of this image is actually a dust tower that occurred in 2010 and was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The blue and white clouds are water vapor.

HiRISE captured this image of a kilometer-sized crater in Mars’ southern hemisphere in June 2014. In late winter, as Mars approaches spring, the crater shows frost on all of its southern slopes.

The two largest earthquakes discovered by NASA’s Insight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fosai. Scientists have previously discovered signs of tectonic activity here, including landslides. This image was taken with the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter.

This image is the first image taken from the surface of Mars. It was captured by the Viking 1 lander on July 20, 1976 shortly after it landed on the planet.