Description This view of a crescent Mars was captured on May 15, 2026, at about 5:03 a.m. PDT by NASA’s Psyche mission as it approached the planet for a gravity assist. Captured by the spacecraft’s multispectral imager instrument, this was the last view of the whole planet before it began to overfill the field of
Description This is Psyche’s first view of a nearly “full Mars” seen shortly after the spacecraft’s closest approach to the planet on May 15, 2026. The view extends from the south polar cap northwards to the Valles Marineris canyon system and beyond. With Mars in the rearview mirror, the spacecraft will soon resume use of
Description This is the highest-resolution view of the water ice-rich south polar cap of Mars captured by NASA’s Psyche mission after it made its close approach with the planet for a gravity assist. The image scale is around 0.7 miles per pixel (1.14 kilometers per pixel). The cap itself extends across more than 430 miles
This view of the Martian surface, captured by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on May 15, 2026, shows streaks that have formed due to wind blowing over impact craters in the Syrtis Major region.
Captured by the multispectral imager instrument on NASA’s Psyche mission, this is an enhanced-color view of the large double-ring crater Huygens (upper right; about 290 miles, or 470 kilometers, in diameter) and the surrounding heavily cratered southern highlands near 15 degrees south latitude.
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on March 11, 2026, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Assembled from 61 individual images, the selfie shows Perseverance training its mast on the “Arathusa” rocky outcrop after creating a whitish circular abrasion patch. The
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this panorama of an area nicknamed “Arbot” on April 5, 2026, the 1,882nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Made of 46 images, the panorama offers one of the richest geological vistas of the
Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this view of a rock nicknamed “Atacama” on May 6, 2026, the 4,877th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rock had gotten stuck to the drill on the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm on April 25. Engineers spent several days
Description This colorized image of Mars was captured by NASA’s Psyche mission on May 3, 2026, about 3 million miles (4.8 million kilometers) from the planet. The spacecraft is approaching the planet for a gravity assist on May 15 that will give it a boost in speed and adjust its trajectory toward asteroid Psyche for
Description Engineer Jaakko Karras inspects a next-generation Mars helicopter rotor blade prior to supersonic speed testing in the 25-Foot Space Simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in November 2025. The three-bladed rotor hanging horizontally in the foreground is the next-gen rotor being tested. The vertically aligned two-bladed rotor provided a “headwind,” enabling
Description Engineer Fernando Mier-Hicks inspects a test stand used to investigate the performance of next-generation Mars helicopter rotor blades at high speeds inside the 25-Foot Space Simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California in November 2025. Data from the tests indicate that the rotors could surpass the sound barrier without breaking apart. The
On April 25, 2026, Curiosity drilled a sample from a rock nicknamed “Atacama,” which is an estimated 1.5 feet in diameter at its base, 6 inches thick and weighs roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms). When the rover retracted its arm, the entire rock lifted out of the ground, suspended by the fixed sleeve that surrounds the rotating drill bit.
Description NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Thebe, the second largest of Jupiter’s inner moons, during a close pass on May 1, 2026. The spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) captured this image from a distance of approximately 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) at a resolution of about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel. Thebe resides
Description Team members past and present from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter mission gathered on April 15, 2026, to celebrate 25 years since the spacecraft’s launch, which took place April 7, 2001. For the occasion, the team rolled out a giant global map of Mars created using imagery from Odyssey’s THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System)
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to capture this 360-degree panorama of a region nicknamed “Crocodile Bridge” on Jezero Crater’s rim. The panorama is made up of 980 images, 971 of which were taken on Dec. 18, 2025, the 1,717th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. An additional nine were
Description A scientist produced this map of land subsidence (sinking) in Mexico City using data from the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission captured between Oct. 25, 2025, and Jan. 17, 2026. The region has been a well-known hot spot of subsidence for decades, and images like this help confirm that NISAR is performing as
Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its right navigation camera — one of two on the rover’s mast, or head — to capture the images in this timelapse, which spans six years of driving. The images were snapped between Jan. 2, 2020, and March 8, 2026 (the 2,633rd and 4,830th Martian day, or sol, of
Description NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree view of a region filled with low ridges called boxwork formations between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025 (the 4,714th to 4,741st Martian days, or sols, of the mission). At 1.5 billion pixels, this is one of the largest panoramas Curiosity has ever taken (the rover’s largest
An observation made by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our Milky Way galaxy.
Description A graphical representation of the Deep Space Network’s radio frequency antennas indicate signal acquisition from NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon on April 1, 2026, inside the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Two antennas at the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex, Deep Space Station 54 and
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