Red Planet, Real Data: the Most Stunning Mars Rover Images

In February 2023, Perseverance posed for a selfie with the nine sample tubes it had deposited at "Three Forks," a sample depot within Jezero Crater. Each titanium tube contains a core of ancient Martian rock — the first materials ever deliberately cached on another planet for future retrieval. If the Mars Sample Return mission proceeds as planned, these tubes will eventually be launched from the Martian surface, captured in orbit, and returned to Earth, where they will undergo analysis that no rover instrument is sophisticated enough to perform.

Taken by the WATSON camera on Perseverance's robotic arm, this selfie shows the rover at its first sample depot, surrounded by titanium cylinders containing some of the most scientifically valuable material ever collected beyond Earth. The image required compositing dozens of individual frames taken at different arm positions — a standard technique that produces a single seamless photograph with no robotic arm visible in the final image. Behind the rover, the delta deposits of Jezero Crater's ancient river system are clearly visible.

On October 21-26, 2023 — the 3,984th and 3,989th Martian sols of its mission — Curiosity captured this sweeping 360-degree black-and-white panorama at a rock outcrop nicknamed "Sequoia." By this point in the mission, Curiosity had climbed nearly a kilometre up the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, a five-kilometre mountain of layered sedimentary rock that records billions of years of Martian climate history. Each rock layer the rover examines corresponds to a distinct chapter in the story of how Mars lost its ancient oceans.

On April 2, 2022, Perseverance used its Mastcam-Z zoom camera to film the Martian moon Phobos transiting across the face of the Sun — the most detailed solar eclipse footage ever captured from the Martian surface. Phobos is not round like our Moon but potato-shaped, orbiting so close to Mars that it completes three full orbits each Martian day. By timing its transits precisely, scientists can track how Phobos is gradually spiralling inward and calculate when — in about 50 million years — it will break apart to form a ring around the planet.

In December 2021, Perseverance's SHERLOC instrument — a Raman spectrometer that uses ultraviolet lasers to identify organic compounds — detected multiple distinct types of organic molecules within a rock called "Garde." Organics are the molecular building blocks associated with biological processes, though they can also form through purely chemical reactions. The image shows the spectrometer's view of the abraded rock surface, with coloured overlays indicating the distribution of different organic compound signatures. This was one of the most scientifically significant early findings of the Perseverance mission.

In September 2022, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's MARCI camera captured a continent-size regional dust storm moving across the planet's face, visible here as a beige haze in this flat global projection. Dust storms are a defining feature of Martian climate, occasionally growing to envelop the entire planet in a uniform orange haze that blocks sunlight for months at a time. It was a global dust storm of this type that ended the Opportunity rover mission in 2018, reducing solar power to the point where the rover was unable to keep its batteries charged.

In late 2021, the engineering test doubles of both Curiosity and Perseverance shared floor space in the expanded Mars Yard at JPL — side by side for the first time. Curiosity's earthly double is called MAGGIE; Perseverance's is OPTIMISM. These full-scale replicas are used to rehearse and troubleshoot manoeuvres before they are commanded on Mars, where the light-speed communication delay of up to 24 minutes makes real-time control impossible. Every drive, every arm movement, every drill sample is practised on Earth first.

In late 2004, the Opportunity rover used its arm-mounted instruments to analyse the chemistry of Martian soil at Meridiani Planum, a flat plain near the equator. Opportunity's findings confirmed the presence of the mineral hematite in spherical formations dubbed "blueberries" — evidence that liquid water had once saturated these rocks. It was among the first definitive proof that Mars had a wet geological past and was a landmark moment in the search for environments that might once have supported microbial life.

This artist's concept from 2003 depicts a Mars Exploration Rover on the Martian surface, conveying the scale and design of the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers before their launches. Both rovers were designed for 90-day missions. Spirit operated for 2,695 Martian days before becoming mired in soft soil in 2009; Opportunity lasted an extraordinary 5,498 Martian days — nearly fifteen Earth years — before a planet-encircling dust storm silenced it forever in June 2018. NASA engineers made one final attempt to contact Opportunity, broadcasting Billie Holiday's "I'll Be Seeing You" across the 200 million kilometres between the two planets.

In February 2023, Perseverance posed for a selfie with the nine sample tubes it had deposited at "Three Forks," a sample depot within Jezero Crater. Each titanium tube contains a core of ancient Martian rock — the first materials ever deliberately cached on another planet for future retrieval. If the Mars Sample Return mission proceeds as planned, these tubes will eventually be launched from the Martian surface, captured in orbit, and returned to Earth, where they will undergo analysis that no rover instrument is sophisticated enough to perform.

Taken by the WATSON camera on Perseverance's robotic arm, this selfie shows the rover at its first sample depot, surrounded by titanium cylinders containing some of the most scientifically valuable material ever collected beyond Earth. The image required compositing dozens of individual frames taken at different arm positions — a standard technique that produces a single seamless photograph with no robotic arm visible in the final image. Behind the rover, the delta deposits of Jezero Crater's ancient river system are clearly visible.

On October 21-26, 2023 — the 3,984th and 3,989th Martian sols of its mission — Curiosity captured this sweeping 360-degree black-and-white panorama at a rock outcrop nicknamed "Sequoia." By this point in the mission, Curiosity had climbed nearly a kilometre up the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, a five-kilometre mountain of layered sedimentary rock that records billions of years of Martian climate history. Each rock layer the rover examines corresponds to a distinct chapter in the story of how Mars lost its ancient oceans.

On April 2, 2022, Perseverance used its Mastcam-Z zoom camera to film the Martian moon Phobos transiting across the face of the Sun — the most detailed solar eclipse footage ever captured from the Martian surface. Phobos is not round like our Moon but potato-shaped, orbiting so close to Mars that it completes three full orbits each Martian day. By timing its transits precisely, scientists can track how Phobos is gradually spiralling inward and calculate when — in about 50 million years — it will break apart to form a ring around the planet.

In December 2021, Perseverance's SHERLOC instrument — a Raman spectrometer that uses ultraviolet lasers to identify organic compounds — detected multiple distinct types of organic molecules within a rock called "Garde." Organics are the molecular building blocks associated with biological processes, though they can also form through purely chemical reactions. The image shows the spectrometer's view of the abraded rock surface, with coloured overlays indicating the distribution of different organic compound signatures. This was one of the most scientifically significant early findings of the Perseverance mission.

In September 2022, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's MARCI camera captured a continent-size regional dust storm moving across the planet's face, visible here as a beige haze in this flat global projection. Dust storms are a defining feature of Martian climate, occasionally growing to envelop the entire planet in a uniform orange haze that blocks sunlight for months at a time. It was a global dust storm of this type that ended the Opportunity rover mission in 2018, reducing solar power to the point where the rover was unable to keep its batteries charged.

In late 2021, the engineering test doubles of both Curiosity and Perseverance shared floor space in the expanded Mars Yard at JPL — side by side for the first time. Curiosity's earthly double is called MAGGIE; Perseverance's is OPTIMISM. These full-scale replicas are used to rehearse and troubleshoot manoeuvres before they are commanded on Mars, where the light-speed communication delay of up to 24 minutes makes real-time control impossible. Every drive, every arm movement, every drill sample is practised on Earth first.

In late 2004, the Opportunity rover used its arm-mounted instruments to analyse the chemistry of Martian soil at Meridiani Planum, a flat plain near the equator. Opportunity's findings confirmed the presence of the mineral hematite in spherical formations dubbed "blueberries" — evidence that liquid water had once saturated these rocks. It was among the first definitive proof that Mars had a wet geological past and was a landmark moment in the search for environments that might once have supported microbial life.

This artist's concept from 2003 depicts a Mars Exploration Rover on the Martian surface, conveying the scale and design of the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers before their launches. Both rovers were designed for 90-day missions. Spirit operated for 2,695 Martian days before becoming mired in soft soil in 2009; Opportunity lasted an extraordinary 5,498 Martian days — nearly fifteen Earth years — before a planet-encircling dust storm silenced it forever in June 2018. NASA engineers made one final attempt to contact Opportunity, broadcasting Billie Holiday's "I'll Be Seeing You" across the 200 million kilometres between the two planets.