Before Curiosity’s landing 13 years ago, the science team observed all the geological wonders scattered across the slopes of Mount Sharp and eagerly awaited the day when they would be able to use the rover to explore them. Since then, the rover has visited many of these targets—valleys, riverbeds, lake beds—and discovered several unexpected places.
October 3, 2025, Sols 4675–4681. Since Sol 4600, the team has been exploring the heart of one of these long-sought wonders—the box-shaped structures—to uncover the nature of this vast network of ridges and valleys. Each stop along the way was an exercise in systematic detective work.
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this image using its right-hand navigation camera. It shows three types of geological features that have fascinated the mission team for months: a bright, arc-shaped ridge, a darker, sand-filled depression, and, in the distance, Mishe Mokwa Hill. Curiosity captured the image on October 2, 2025—sol 4677, or Martian day 4677, of the Mars Science Laboratory mission—at 15:49:32 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
APXS and ChemCam analyses, from the center of the ridge to its edges and into the adjacent basin, looked for chemical changes that indicate what holds the ridges together, making them taller than the basins. Mastcam and ChemCam RMI imaging mapped the architecture of the ridges and basins, searching for structures that provide clues about their formation. Their imaging of more distant features, such as buttes rising hundreds of meters on either side of the valley housing the box-shaped structures, helped determine the geologic context of the area. MAHLI imaging of the target ridges and basins looked for changes in grain size that could indicate how the bedrock of the box-shaped structures was deposited. DAN surveyed the ground beneath the rover at each stop, measuring hydrogen content (and thus inferred water content) to see how it varies between ridges and basins.
The team processed all the results of this thorough study to decide on the next drilling location for SAM and CheMin to investigate the box-shaped formations. The rover headed north toward the Monte Grande Basin, where promising bedrock for sampling had been discovered. The rover ultimately drilled into the rock. Comparing the mineralogical composition, volatile content, and organic chemistry of the ridges and basins will provide the most complete understanding of how the box-shaped formations formed.
REMS and RAD aren’t particularly concerned about whether they’re on a ridge or a valley, as the sky above is their domain. Both instruments tirelessly monitored the weather—on Mars and in space, respectively. Navcam and Mastcam assisted in environmental observations, measuring dust levels in the atmosphere, tracking dust devils, and recording the final days of the cloudy season.
October 10, 2025, Sol 4682-4688. This week was one of seasonal changes and important milestones for the mission. Mars has exited its “cloud season” and is entering its “dust season” as the planet moves closer to the Sun. This means the team should expect increased dust lifting and dust devil activity over the next few months. With more dust in the atmosphere, the beautiful clear skies that allowed the rover to photograph objects at vast distances from the planet, such as a mountain 57 miles (91 kilometers) outside Gale Crater, are expected to be lost.
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this image, which shows both the floor of Gale Crater, where the rover began its ascent of Mount Sharp more than a decade ago, and the Monte Grande basin, which will be the next target for drilling. Curiosity took the image with its Front Hazcam on October 9, 2025—sol 4684, or Martian day 4684, of the Mars Science Laboratory mission—at 21:28:14 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
On October 6, just after 1 a.m. GMT (8 p.m. EDT on October 5), the Curiosity rover celebrated its seventh full Martian year on the surface. (Because Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth, a year on Mars—or one complete trip around the Sun—lasts 687 Earth days.) Curiosity is only the second rover on Mars to reach this milestone, behind only Opportunity. While Curiosity hasn’t yet matched Opportunity in operational duration or distance traveled, over the past seven Martian years, the team has compiled the longest and most complete record of modern Martian climate. REMS has recorded weather conditions at least once an hour, nearly every hour since 2012, and RAD has measured surface radiation conditions for more than a full solar cycle, data that will be crucial for future human exploration of Mars. More than 3,000 cloud videos were captured and countless observations were made of atmospheric opacity, dust rise, and dust devil activity.
This week was devoted to preparations for the first of two planned drilling operations in the box-shaped structure area. The first drilling was conducted in one of the “troughs” of this structure.
October 17, 2025, sols 4689-4694. Curiosity has been exploring the “box lander” for several months. The box-like structures are a series of ridges and basins, so the plan is to drill inside one of the basins and then into one of the adjacent ridges.
First, a drilling sorting operation was conducted in the Valle de la Luna region within the Monte Grande basin, using multiple instruments. The chemical composition was assessed using APXS and ChemCam to ensure it was within the expected range and not completely different from the bedrock composition the team had been monitoring. Rover planners (RPs) are using a “preload” test, applying pressure to the bedrock surface, to characterize how the rover’s arm and the rock might behave during drilling. Multiple images (including before and after the preload test) are being captured using MAHLI and Mastcam to help the RP evaluate the surface of the potential drilling area.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of the Valle de la Luna block in the Monte Grande basin, a site it planned to drill on the weekend of October 18-19, 2025. Curiosity took the image with its Front Hazcam on October 12, 2025—sol 4687, or Martian day 4687, of the Mars Science Laboratory mission—at 23:11:12 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Finding a suitable drilling location in the pits is challenging, as the bottom of each pit (the area of greatest interest) is often covered in sand or small pebbles, with only occasional bedrock visible, as you can see in the attached image. However, at Monte Grande, the chemical composition indicates that the rock is within the expected composition range. MAHLI images show a smoother surface in the center of the brushed area (where drilling will be focused), and before-and-after images showed that the rock responded well to the preload test. The rover and mission scientists focused on the data during a very intensive meeting called the Target Acquisition Assessment Meeting, or TAAM. The team drilled 43 holes on Mars.
CheMin (chemical mineralogy) and SAM (sample analysis at Mars) will use the resulting samples to gain deeper insights, studying mineralogy and composition in ways not possible with APXS and ChemCam. We can then use this drilling data to interpret APXS and ChemCam data and better understand the formation of these box-shaped structures, especially if it is difficult to associate them with suitable targets on the ridges.
November 14, 2025. From Curiosity’s ridgetop location amid the Box Block, the highlight of the week was the successful drilling of the Nevado Sajama target. Data collected by APXS, ChemCam, and MAHLI from the rover’s workspace and its immediate vicinity gave the team confidence to continue sampling. APXS and ChemCam data from two targets cleared by the DRT—Nevado Sajama (before its drilling) and Tesoro del Pangal—showed that the workspace’s chemical composition was similar to numerous ridgetop targets analyzed during the Box Block campaign.
MAHLI imaging revealed the presence of fine veins at both targets and confirmed the structural strength of the drill target after rover engineers tested the strength of Nevado Sajama by pressing the drill tip into it. The vein types detected by MAHLI were examined by ChemCam on eroded bedrock surfaces, revealing both bright white and gray materials. These targets, Arenas Blancas, Camarones, and Exaltación, will provide a better understanding of the fluids that infiltrated the box ridges, which may have contributed to their erosive resistance. DAN collected data across large areas of the sols where all this activity occurred, providing information on the hydrogen content (and, by extension, water) within the ridge. Mastcam has begun and will continue to create a comprehensive mosaic of our location, which will include both Nevado Sajama and the Valle de la Luna drill target in the adjacent basin.
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this image of the Nevado Sajama borehole using its left navigation camera on November 13, 2025—sol 4718, or Martian day 4718, of the Mars Science Laboratory mission—at 19:46:43 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rover’s payload was aimed not only at studying the ridge and the drill site but also at expanding the systematic environmental dataset Curiosity has been collecting for the past 13 years. The REMS and RAD cameras regularly recorded Martian and space weather, respectively, for an entire week. The Mastcam and Navcam cameras measured atmospheric dust and monitored the presence of clouds and dust devils, while the ChemCam and APXS cameras alternately measured various chemical components in the atmosphere.
Drilling was completed on Sol 4718. The first portions of drilled material will be delivered to CheMin for analysis. The entire team eagerly awaits CheMin’s results to compare them with the mineralogy of Luna Valley obtained from the core.
December 12, 2025, sols 4743-4749. The trip, which began at the Nevado Sajama drill site, brought Curiosity back to the Monte Grande basin. The team had previously visited this basin during the Valle de la Luna drilling campaign, but now that they had seen the results of drilling samples from both Valle de la Luna and Nevado Sajama, they decided that much more work remained to be done.
Overall, the scientific objectives here included analyzing another well-exposed bedrock block in Monte Grande to improve statistical data on the bedrock composition in the depressions, as well as obtaining high-resolution images and analyzing the composition of sections of the depression walls beyond those surveyed during the Valle de la Luna expedition. This is part of a systematic mini-campaign to map the transverse profile of the depression-ridge structure from top to bottom in this area.
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this close-up image of polygonal formations in Monte Grande Basin. Similar polygonal patterns in different layers have previously been observed elsewhere in Gale Crater. Curiosity captured the image using its Mars Hand Lens (MAHLI), located on the rotating turret of the rover’s robotic arm, on December 11, 2025—Martian day 4745 (Mars Science Laboratory mission day 4745)—at 16:55:37 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The images obtained after the drilling was completed revealed a surprise: the neighboring Valle de la Luna block was covered in polygons! As it turned out, the rover’s position during the previous visit to Valle de la Luna prevented us from capturing images of the polygonal shapes on this block, so this was the first good look at them. The team had seen similar polygonal patterns in various layers of Gale Crater before—recently in layered sulfate strata (for example, during sols 4532-4533 and sols 4370-4371), but we hadn’t seen them at the bottom of the hollow structure. Interestingly, this block appears more clastic in texture than many of the previously observed polygon-covered blocks.
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The team was interested in the relationship of the visible protruding fracture-filling material with the fracture-filling materials observed in previous polygons, as well as the relationship of the upper polygonal surface with the more chaotic-looking outcrops below and with equivalent layers in the adjacent void wall. Therefore, they planned to create a very large MAHLI mosaic, which would allow 3D modeling of the upper and lower exposed surfaces of the block containing the polygon. Several APXS and ChemCam LIBS observations were also planned, targeting the centers and ridges of the polygons to measure composition. Meanwhile, Mastcam was planning stereo images of the adjacent void wall, in addition to various blocks on the void floor.
The Curiosity rover sent back a holiday postcard from Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover team created this “postcard” by commanding the rover to take images at two different times of day on November 18, 2025, coinciding with the 4722nd and 4723rd Martian days (sols) of the mission. The panoramic images were taken at 4:15 PM on sol 4722 and at 8:20 AM on sol 4723 (both local Martian time) and then merged. Color was later added to enhance the artistic interpretation of the scene: blue represents the morning panorama, and yellow represents the afternoon panorama. The resulting “postcard” is similar to those the rover captured in June 2023 and November 2021. Adding color to these merged images helps highlight various landscape details. NASA/JPL-Caltech
The depression also contained fresh, light-colored material left behind by the rover’s passage through it and scraping the rock, so additional measurements were taken at this site using APXS and the ChemCam LIBS spectrometer to measure the fresh surface.
Two iconic inventions, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity rover, have been named to TIME magazine’s Best Inventions Hall of Fame, a list of the 25 groundbreaking inventions of the last twenty-five years that have had the greatest global impact since TIME began publishing its annual Best Inventions list in 2000. These inventions are featured in the December print issue of TIME magazine.
NASA’s Curiosity rover used two different cameras to create this selfie with Mont Mercoux, a 6-meter (20-foot) high rock outcrop in the background. The panorama consists of 60 images captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the rover’s robotic arm on March 26, 2021, sol 3070 of the mission. These images were combined with 11 images captured by the Mastcam on the rover’s mast, or “head,” on March 16, 2021, sol 3060 of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Built and operating a million miles from Earth, the Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, offering humanity breathtaking views of newborn stars, distant galaxies, and even planets orbiting other stars. New technologies developed to achieve Webb’s scientific goals—from optics and detectors to thermal control systems—now touch everyday life, improving the production of everything from high-quality cameras and contact lenses to advanced semiconductors and the control of aircraft engine components.
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” dotted with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby young star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Obtained in infrared light by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously unseen star-forming regions for the first time. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
Meanwhile, on Mars, the unstoppable Curiosity rover, NASA’s car-sized science laboratory, has been detecting signs that the Red Planet may have once supported life for over a decade, transforming our understanding of our planetary neighbor. These NASA missions continue to make breakthroughs that have changed our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Curiosity has also paved the way for future astronauts: its radiation detector studied the radiation environment on Mars for nearly 14 years, and its memorable landing using a robotic jetpack allowed heavier spacecraft to land on the surface—a capability needed to send cargo and humans to Mars.
The James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity Mars rover have been named to TIME magazine’s “Hall of Fame” of the Best Inventions. NASA Green Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s leading observatory for space science. Webb unravels the mysteries of our solar system, peers beyond it to distant worlds around other stars, and explores the enigmatic structure and origins of our universe, as well as our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA and its partners, ESA (the European Space Agency) and CSA (the Canadian Space Agency).
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