Asteroid Surfaces and Craters

Images capturing the surfaces of asteroids and craters taken by NASA spacecraft, featuring detailed geological formations and textures.

Proposed Mars Polar Lander Landing Site (Flat Map)
Proposed Mars Polar Lander Landing Site (Flat Map)
224 assets in this story
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NASA's Dawn spacecraft has spiraled closer and closer to the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. These images were obtained by Dawn's framing camera in the three phases of its campaign since arriving at Vesta in mid-2011.
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This map shows in red the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from its landing site at 'Bradbury Landing.' The white line shows the planned route to reach destinations on Mount Sharp. Sol 669 will complete one Martian year.
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This image shows the topography, with shading added, around the area where NASA's Curiosity rover is slated to land on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The red oval indicates the targeted landing area for the rover known as the 'landing ellipse.'
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This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover (blue line) and locations where the rover's ChemCam instrument detected the element boron (dots, colored by abundance of boron according to the key at right).
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Evidence for Recent Liquid Water on Mars: Basic Features of Martian Gullies
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First Flyby of Dione
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Spring Defrosting of Mass-Movement Material at South High Latitudes
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This false-color map shows the area within Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT). The rover is heading toward Glenelg, just to the lower right of Bradbury.
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Pyroxene at Syrtis Major
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This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in mid-November 2015, approaching examples of dunes in the 'Bagnold Dunes' dune field.
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This false-color image, made from infrared data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows dark and bright clouds on Saturn associated with thunderstorm activity.
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NASA's Galileo spacecraft obtained this image of half of Io's disk in darkness on Sept. 19, 1997.
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Spirit's Extended-Mission Destination
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A region known as 'Cape York' on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, where the Opportunity rover worked for 20 months, is highlighted in these images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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These images from NASA's Terra satellite are of the southeast portion of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada, acquired on March 6, 2000, during Terra orbit 1155.
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This illustration schematically shows where the Shallow Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected flood channels that had been buried by lava flows in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars.
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This map shows the path that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit followed from the 743rd Martian day (Feb. 4, 2009), or sol, to Sol 2471 (Dec. 15, 2010). Spirit has been at a sand-trap location called 'Troy' since April 2009.
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Eruption at Tvashtar Catena on Io
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This set of images compares test images taken by four cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before launch.
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Mawrth Vallis, a Finalist Not Selected as a Landing Site for Curiosity
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Spirit's Express Route to 'Columbia Hills'
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NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft obtained these views of the icy particle cloud around comet Hartley 2. The image on the left is the full image of comet Hartley 2 for context, and the image on the right was enlarged and cropped.
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Month-long Evolution of the D/G Jupiter Impact Sites from Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9
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Five previously unnamed craters on Mercury now have names. Shown here are Carolan, Enheduanna, Karsh, Kulthum, and Rivera as seen by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft.