NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory just finished a punishing test campaign on a piece of hardware smaller and lighter than most people would expect for a Mars mission. In July, engineers put a flexible, fabric-based radar antenna through the equivalent of more than two full prime missions of hard landings on the Red Planet. The antenna came through with its signal strength intact.

Curiosity has been climbing the broad valley nicknamed Valle Grande for weeks when its cameras locked onto something that stopped the science team cold. On June 11, 2026, the 4,923rd Martian day of the mission, the rover’s Mastcam stitched together eleven frames into a clean panorama of a solitary butte standing roughly 20 feet tall. Mission planners named it Miraflores. A thick layer of dark sand sits on its flat top like a natural crown, while the rock faces below show the slow work of wind and time carving away everything that once surrounded it. That erosion left the butte standing and deepened the valley the rover is now driving through.

NASA has just released a time-lapse video of the Psyche spacecraft approaching Mars, passing within 2,864 miles of the surface, and then pulling away after using the planet’s gravity to gain speed on May 15. The sequence, built from photographs taken over a month, shows Mars as a narrow dazzling crescent that expands and recedes behind the craft. Sunlight scattering through the dusty landscape led the crescent edges to shimmer and spread wider than intended, giving spectators a unique perspective rarely seen in missions.

Curiosity had been working its way down the Gediz Vallis channel on the flank of Mount Sharp for months. The rover’s wheels left fresh tracks in the loose soil and scattered stones as it hunted for clues about the planet’s ancient past. On May 30, 2024, during the 4,200th Martian day of the mission, one of those wheels rolled over a rock that looked no different from thousands of others nearby. The one-ton machine pressed down, and the stone gave way with a quiet crack that no one on Earth witnessed in real time.

In the frame, NASA’s six-wheeled Perseverance rover is securely planted on a stretch of dirt far to the west of Jezero Crater. You can see its mast dipping down towards Arethusa, the rocky protrusion we’ve all become familiar with, before swinging back around to face the camera full on. Years of driving have created a fine layer of dust on the rover and its wheels, catching the light and creating a beautiful warm glow. Meanwhile, a new circular mark on Arethusa indicates where the rover dug in with its biters and removed a portion of the surface to examine what was hidden beneath. The robotic arm in front, with the WATSON camera attached to its end, is the one that took it all in.

NASA’s Curiosity had spent years gradually ascending the slopes of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. On April 25, the rover drilled into a rock known as Atacama, which was about a foot and a half across and six inches thick, weighing over thirty pounds. The drill sank in neatly enough to collect the sample the scientists need. The rover then pulled its arm back. The entire rock came with it.

A trio of small helicopters called SkyFall are heading to Mars in late 2028, riding aboard NASA’s first nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft. Built on everything the agency learned from Ingenuity, the first helicopter ever flown on another planet, the two vehicles are designed to go considerably further. Each one carries a suite of scientific instruments including high resolution cameras and ground penetrating radar capable of searching for buried ice beneath the surface, with the data collected expected to prove invaluable for planning future human missions to Mars