Mars is covered in craters. Most of them are very old. The one you see here is, at most, two years and four months young – certified fresh, in cosmic terms.

The Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity rovers may get the headlines for their craters clambering exploits but it's NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, quietly observing the planet turn from 178 miles up, that's most critical to our exploration of the Red Planet.

Four months ago, NASA landed a one-ton, nuclear-powered rover on the Red Planet, scattering the Martian terrain with heaps of debris in the process. Curiosity, upon arrival, shed so much of its Entry Descent & Landing hardware that high resolution images of the planet's surface are still turning up traces of the…

This is absolutely incredible. The HiRISE camera NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to spot Curiosity as it was descending on the surface of the red planet. You can clearly see the capsule and the deployed supersonic parachute.

As of this posting, we are just 2 days, 12 hours, and thirty minutes away from the Curiosity rover making touchdown on Mars. We're excited. NASA's excited. Even Angry Birds is excited.

One of the best ways to learn about a planet's history is to examine its geology, so one of the things scientists look for when sending rovers to Mars is areas on the planet's surface that allow access to multiple layers of diverse and interesting rock types.

Evidence of Mars' watery past continues to pile up, but details surrounding the extent and duration of the planet's hydrous history remain muddled — just how wet was Mars, really?

Remember a few weeks ago when astronomers spotted that "ghostly snake" of a twister creeping its way across the face of Mars? Well, the windstorm featured up top makes that other storm look like an adorable little dust-up.

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is an incredible piece of equipment. Currently circling the Red Planet aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the instrument is capable of capturing photographs of the Martian surface at unprecedented resolution, averaging about…

At first I thought this image was a tattoo under a powerful microscope. One near some feminine naughty bits. But no, there are no tattoos as weird and wonderful as what this image really is. Not in this planet, anyway.

This close-up of the rough terrain near Mars' Zilair Crater was snapped by the High Resolution (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 3. It's one of several amazing new images that make for some beautiful desktop wallpaper.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE—High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment—camera has captured one of the most beautiful photographs of Mars to date: An oblique view—at 22 degrees east of straight down—of the Victoria Crater, in the Meridiani Planum region.