A location on Mars associated with the best-selling novel and Hollywood movie, "The Martian" is seen in an image from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken May 17, 2015.
This area is in the Acidalia Planitia region and in the novel and the movie, it is the landing site of a crewed mission named Ares 3.
Nili Patera, one of the most active dune fields on the planet Mars is shown in this handout photo taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 1, 2014, and provided by NASA on May 2, 2014.
By monitoring the sand dune changes, NASA can determine how winds vary seasonally and year-to-year.
This image from the right Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows rough spherical features on the surface of the planet in an area called 'Yellowknife Bay' in this NASA handout released Jan. 15, 2013.
These features are interpreted as concretions, implying they formed in water that percolated through pores in the sediment. Spherical concretions have previously been discovered in other rocks on Mars.
This image, cropped from a larger panoramic image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit panoramic camera, released by NASA on March 18, 2004, shows the rover's destination toward the hills nicknamed the "Columbia Hills." The rover is currently positioned outside the view of this image, on the right. This image was taken on sols 68 and 69 of Spirit's mission (March 12 and 13, 2004) from the location the rover first reached on the western rim of the crater. The image is in approximate true color, based on a scaling of data from the red, green and blue.
In this image released on Jan. 19, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" has found an iron meteorite on Mars, the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel. This composite combines images taken through the panoramic camera's 600-nanometer (red), 530-nanometer (green), and 480-nanometer (blue) filters.
Mars’ northern-most sand dunes are seen as they begin to emerge from their winter cover of seasonal carbon dioxide (dry) ice in this image acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 16, 2014. The steep lee sides of the dunes are also ice-free along the crest, allowing sand to slide down the dune. Dark splotches are places where ice cracked earlier in spring, releasing sand, according to a NASA news release.
A view of the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars, perched high on the Tharsis rise in the upper reaches of the Valles Marineris canyon system is seen in this NASA handout picture acquired on Aug. 31, 2013, by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and released by NASA on Sept. 24, 2013. Targeting the bright rimmed bedrock knobs, the image also captures the interaction of two distinct types of windblown sediments. Surrounding the bedrock knobs is a network of pale reddish ridges with a complex interlinked morphology.
The surface of the planet Mars inside Gale's Crater is shown as NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drives toward a flat rock with pale veins that may hold clues to a wet history on the planet in this NASA handout photo released Jan. 15, 2013. If the rock meets rover engineers' approval when Curiosity rolls up to it in the coming days, it will become the first to be drilled for a sample during the Mars Science Laboratory mission.
This color image taken on Aug. 8, 2012 from NASA's Curiosity rover, and released Aug. 13, shows part of the wall of Gale Crater, the location on Mars where the rover landed on Aug. 5, 2012. This is part of a larger, high-resolution color mosaic made from images obtained by Curiosity's Mast Camera. This image of the crater wall is north of the landing site, or behind the rover. Here, a network of valleys believed to have formed by water erosion enters Gale Crater from the outside. This is the first view scientists have had of a fluvial system – one relating to a river or stream from the surface of Mars.
An impact crater on Mars is seen in an image taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov. 19, 2013 and released Feb. 5, 2014. The crater spans approximately 30 meters (100 feet) in diameter and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone. Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image, due to the removal of the reddish dust in that area.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken on June 27, 2013 and released on July 24, 2013. The rover's tracks are visible extending from the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene. Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site.
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's Surface Stereo Imager shows two trenches dug by Phoenix's Robotic Arm in this image taken June 8, 2008, the 14th Martian day after landing. Soil from the right trench, informally called "Baby Bear," was delivered to Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, on June 6, 2008.
A rock outcrop called Link pops out from a Martian surface in this NASA handout image taken by the 100-millimeter Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover Sept. 2, 2012 and released Sept. 27, 2012. Rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a few centimeters in size are in a matrix of white material. The outcrop characteristics are consistent with a sedimentary conglomerate, or a rock that was formed by the deposition of water and is composed of many smaller rounded rocks cemented together. Scientists enhanced the color in this version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain.
