This week, NASA marks the 13th anniversary of the landing of its Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity has now driven more than 22 miles across the cold and dry planet, over the course of 4,620 Martian days, making countless observations and discoveries.

A selfie of a large Mars rover, with a reddish-colored dry, rocky, and dusty Martian landscape in the background.JPL / NASANASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie in November of 2020, at a location nicknamed “Mary Anning,” after a 19th-century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe was a site where ancient conditions would have been favorable to supporting life, if it ever was present.A high orbital view of the surface of Mars, with a small parachute and space capsule visible at upper left.NASANASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looked down toward Mars on August 5, 2012, and managed to catch a glimpse of the Curiosity Mars rover as it parachuted to land on the surface. At upper left, you can see two white dots: The upper one is the parachute; the lower, the spacecraft and backshell.A view of rounded and rocky buttes and valleys on MarsJPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASAThis image looking toward the higher regions of Mount Sharp was taken on September 9, 2015, by NASA’s Curiosity rover. In the foreground, about two miles from the rover, is a long ridge teeming with hematite, an iron oxide. Just beyond is an undulating plane rich in clay minerals, and just beyond that are a multitude of rounded buttes, all high in sulfate minerals. The colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret them. This “white balancing” to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast.A high, feathery, slightly iridescent cloudJPL / NASACuriosity photographed this feather-shaped iridescent cloud just after sunset on January 27, 2023. Studying the colors in iridescent clouds tells scientists something about particle size within the clouds and how they grow over time. These clouds were captured as part of a follow-on imaging campaign to study noctilucent, or “night-shining” clouds. While most Martian clouds hover no more than 37 miles (60 kilometers) above the ground and are composed of water ice, these clouds appear to be higher in elevation, where it’s very cold. That suggests these clouds are made of carbon dioxide, or dry ice.a05_1495507.jpgJPL / NASAScientific instruments mounted on Curiosity’s robotic arm examine rocks on the surface on Sol 4616, or July 31, 2025.A small drill hole and brush marks left on a rock's surfaceJPL / NASAA drill hole and brush marks left by Curiosity after it collected a powderized rock sample on November 23, 2024.a07_1190.jpgJPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASAA wind-sculpted dune field, observed by Curiosity’s mast camera (mastcam) on December 12, 2015, during the 1,190th Martian day of the rover’s work on Mars. The location is part of Namib Dune in the Bagnold Dune Field.Two views of the same penny, with one being slightly dustier than the otherJPL / NASATwo views of a century-old penny on Mars, separated by nearly 13 years. This penny is part of a camera-calibration target attached to Curiosity. The MAHLI camera on the rover took this image during Sol 34 (September 9, 2012). The penny is on the MAHLI calibration target as a tip of the hat to geologists’s informal practice of placing a coin or other object of known scale in their photographs. At right, the same penny is seen, rephotographed on June 22, 2025, or Sol 4577, showing almost no visible wear, with only a small coating of dust.A cloudy sky above a rocky bluffJPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASANASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these clouds just after sunset on March 19, 2021, the 3,063rd Martian day of the rover’s mission. The image is made up of 21 individual images stitched together and color-corrected so that the scene appears as it would to the human eye. The clouds are drifting over “Mont Mercou,” a cliff face that Curiosity has been studying.A close view of a flower-like rock artifact on a dry and sandy surfaceNASASmaller than a penny, this flowerlike rock artifact was imaged by Curiosity using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on February 24, 2022. The “flower,” along with the spherical rock artifacts seen to the right, were made in the ancient past when minerals carried by water cemented the rock.A view of two small, irregularly-shaped moons in spaceJPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / Texas A&M University / NASAA view of the two moons of Mars comes from a set of images taken by Curiosity as the larger moon, Phobos, passed in front of the smaller one, Deimos, on August 1, 2013.A shadow is cast by a Mars rover, seen on rocky ground.JPL / NASACuriosity casts a shadow, with its robotic arm raised, seen on Sol 4561, or June 5, 2025.A slightly-damaged wheel of a Mars roverJPL / NASANearly 13 years of wear and tear have left parts of Curiosity’s wheels damaged. Seen on Sol 4518, or April 22, 2025.A small dust devil, seen at a distance, on a rocky hillsideJPL-Caltech / SSI / NASACuriosity spotted this dust devil with one of its Navigation Cameras at about 11:35 a.m. local Mars time on August 9, 2020, while it was at the Mary Anning drill site. This dust devil was estimated to be about 16 feet (5 meters) wide. Contrast has been modified to make the dust easier to see.Sharp-edged rock layers are exposed on a cliffsideJPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASAThis view from Curiosity’s Mastcam shows a hillside outcrop with layered rocks within the “Murray Buttes” region on lower Mount Sharp, seen on September 8, 2016. The buttes and mesas rising above the surface in this area are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had formed.Part of a Mars rover, seen beside rippling sand dunes and a rocky outcropJPL / NASACuriosity prepares to leave Gediz Vallis channel, an area that scientists believe may once have held flowing water, on Sol 4321, or October 2, 2024.A crushed rock with exposed greenish-yellow sulfur crystalsJPL-Caltech / MSSS / NASAThese yellow crystals were revealed after Curiosity happened to drive over a rock and crack it open on May 30, 2024. Using an instrument on the rover’s arm, scientists later determined these crystals are elemental sulfur—the first time this kind of sulfur has been found on the Red Planet.A wheel track in a sandy spotJPL / NASACuriosity left a track in a sandy spot on Sol 2408, or May 15, 2019.A broad view of a rocky shallow valley on MarsNASACuriosity used its Mastcam to capture this mosaic of Gediz Vallis on November 7, 2022, its 3,646th Martian day.A slightly blurry close view of a small iron meteorite with six small white dots on it from a laser instrumentJPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / IRAP / LPGNantes / CNRS / IAS / MSSS / NASAThe dark, golf-ball-size object in this colorized view from the Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera instrument shows a grid of shiny dots where ChemCam had fired laser pulses used to determine the chemical elements in the target’s composition. The analysis confirmed that this object, informally named “Egg Rock,” is an iron-nickel meteorite.An orbital view of a dusty plain on Mars with wiggly tracks left by a roverJPL-Caltech / University of Arizona / NASAThe Curiosity rover appears as a dark speck in this contrast-enhanced view captured by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on February 28, 2025. Trailing behind Curiosity are the rover’s tracks, which can linger on the Martian surface for months before being erased by the wind.A sunset on MarsJPL-Caltech / MSSS / Texas A&M University / NASACuriosity captured this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission’s 956th Martian day (April 15, 2015), from the rover’s location in Gale Crater. This was the first sunset observed in color by Curiosity.A partial selfie of a Mars rover, looking out over a rocky landscapeJPL-Caltech / NASAOn July 26, 2025, Curiosity demonstrated a new multitasking capability while capturing this view. It snapped the 15 images that make up the mosaic while simultaneously communicating with an orbiter. The rover’s tracks cross through a region filled with boxwork formations—hardened ridges created by mineral deposits from subsurface water billions of years ago. This boxwork region is in the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall mountain in the center of Gale Crater.

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