Focus on Mars

This view, taken with the rover’s 100mm Mast Camera, looks south-southwest from the rover’s landing site. The Mastcam has three times better resolution than Curiosity’s 34mm Mastcam, but a narrower view field.

Here’s a 360-degree view of the landing site of Curiosity, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover, which is about 12 miles away from Curiosity.

Here’s the same perspective from the first slide, but taken with the rover’s 34mm Mastcam. In the middle of the image is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of what NASA described as a “moderately sized” impact crater.

This shot, taken by a front Hazard-Avoidance camera on Curiosity, shows track marks from the rover’s first Martian drives. Mount Sharp is on the horizon, which is curved due to the camera’s fisheye lens.

The image, a portion of a larger image taken by Curiosity’s 100mm Mast Camera on Aug. 23, shows the base of Mount Sharp, the rover’s eventual science destination.

Mount Sharp, a mountain inside Gale Crater where the rover landed, is seen here, revealing the lower reaches of the mountain and revealing the geology of the site.

This image taken by Curiosity shows track marks from a successful drive to the scour mark known as Goulburn, an area of bedrock exposed by thrusters on the rover’s descent stage.

While the rover can send direct messages, it communicates more efficiently with the help of spacecraft in orbit. This chart illustrates how the rover talks to Earth.

NASA scientists have been surprised by the similarities between the terrain of Mount Sharp and the Grand Canyon in the United States, notably by the exposed strata on each.

The Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, is about the size of a microwave oven, and will analyze the chemical ingredients in samples of Martian atmosphere, rocks and soil during the mission.