Clik here to view.
Laser Marks
Laser Marks One of the best things about Curiosity is that it shoots lasers. The rover vaporizes tiny bits of rocks and studies the resulting plasma to better understand their composition. Here is one...
View ArticleLayers of Mount Sharp
Layers of Mount Sharp Curiosity is looking up at the slopes of Mount Sharp, the 5-kilometer-high peak at the center of Gale Crater. The rover will eventually drive up this mountain, watching the layers...
View ArticlePanorama
4-Billion-Pixel Panorama Curiosity has taken more than 71,000 photos since landing on Mars. Given that the images are freely available, the collection is a gold mine for anyone with basic image...
View ArticleUltra-HD Landing
Ultra-HD Landing When Curiosity first emerged from its heat shield in the Martian atmosphere, it immediately began to snap pictures of its descent. In the months after landing, we saw many different...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Night Shift
Night Shift Curiosity's hot nuclear battery helps it stay warm during the Martian night. Unlike the preceding solar-powered Mars rovers, Curiosity can actually keep working when the sun goes down. It's...
View ArticleMartian Time-Lapse
Martian Time-Lapse The folks at JPL released a really cool video last week showing a year of Curiosity's operations on Mars. The pictures start at landing and take us all the way through roving,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
First Images
First Images The first pictures beamed back from Mars weren't the most amazing things to look at. But they were beautiful for what they represented: we had a whole new state-of-the-art machine on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Painted Cave Guardian
Carved into Santa Cruz Island's TK side is the Painted Cave, a colorful, huge, watery cavern. Extending for TK miles inward, the cave is one of the largest submarine caves in the world -- and just one...
View ArticleWater Flowed Over the Surface
Water Flowed Over the Surface Curiosity had barely roved anywhere on Mars when it stumbled right into an ancient riverbed. This area, nicknamed Yellowknife Bay, sits at the bottom an an alluvial fan,...
View ArticleAncient Mars Was Habitable
NASA's Curiosity rover is a gigantic mobile laboratory. During the last year, it has roved over the Martian surface exploring a small section of Gale crater while making huge scientific discoveries....
View ArticleGale Crater May Contain Simple Organics
Gale Crater May Contain Simple Organics A media firestorm erupted in November when Curiosity's project scientist John Grotzinger made a casual comment to a reporter. New data from the rover was going...
View ArticleNo Martian Methane
No Martian Methane In 2009, Earth-based researchers announced that they might have detected large plumes of methane on Mars. The findings raised some eyebrows, mainly because they seemed too good to be...
View ArticleRocky Diversity on Mars
Rocky Diversity on Mars Scientists chose Gale crater as Curiosity's landing site because they knew it contained a wide variety of different rock types. What they didn't quite expect was to uncover a...
View ArticleRadiation en Route to Mars is Harsh
Radiation en Route to Mars Is Harsh As it flew through space on the way to Mars, Curiosity measured the levels of radiation. Because it was behind a shield similar to the one that could be used for a...
View ArticleWhat the Future Holds
What the Future Holds With a year under its belt, Curiosity is now off to conduct major explorations at the foot of Mount Sharp, the 5-kilometer-high peak at the center of Gale crater. The rover will...
View ArticleAug 2, 2013
Oval Crater on Mercury Today's color image features Hovnatanian crater, named for Armenian painter Hakop Hovnatanian. The crater's elliptical shape and the bright rays' butterfly pattern indicate that...
View ArticleHarris Point
San Miguel Island is the most westerly of California's northern Channel Islands, a dolphin-shaped wedge that sits 60 miles from Ventura harbor. Mostly a plateau, San Miguel is nearly impossible to see...
View ArticleAug 3, 2013
Quenched Galaxies This image shows 20 of the quenched galaxies — galaxies that are no longer forming stars — seen in the Hubble COSMOS observations. Each galaxy is identified by a crosshair at the...
View ArticleAug 4, 2013
Water in Mars Craters Craters once brim-full with sediments and water have long since drained dry, but traces of their former lives as muddy lakes cling on in the martian desert. The images were taken...
View Articlene-arabic
United States, 1959 This Arabic map of the US was made by the General Drafting Company under contract from the US Information Agency, whose mission was to generate positive propaganda in the post-World...
View Article