Stark Mars terrain awaits Curiosity (pictures)

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, better known as Curiosity, was launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, and in the wee hours of August 6, 2012 (1:31 a.m. ET), will make its touchdown on the red planet. It's a next-generation rover that's much larger, and far more advanced, than any of its predecessors.

Headed to the Gale Crater, the rover's primary objectives include exploring the potential habitability of Mars, past or present; studying the climate and geology; and collecting data for a future manned mission to the planet.

Curiosity is about twice as long as and five times heavier than predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and is carrying more than 10 times the mass of scientific instruments. Every mission to Mars turns up more and more data, and Curiosity is sure to uncover exciting details about the Red Planet. Over the years, hundreds of stunning images have been returned from Mars, and we're just weeks away from the next batch of awe-inspiring visuals.

This amazingly sharp view of Mars was obtained following the refurbishing of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1997. It was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera - 2 (WFPC2), just before Mars opposition, when the red planet made one of its closest passes to the Earth, coming within 60 million miles of us.

NASA has selected Gale Crater, seen here, as the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. This view of Gale is a mosaic of observations made in the visible-light portion of the spectrum by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The landing site on the northern rim of the crater has been circled.

The Curiosity rover itself won't stray too far from its landing spot. Over the planned two (Earth) years of its mission, it is expected to travel a modest 12 miles or so. But that may be the most significant 12 miles ever traveled in planetary exploration. To mark the occasion of Curiosity's arrival, this slideshow brings you a collection of stunning images from all around Mars.

This three-dimensional perspective view of the Gale Crater was created using visible-light imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the High Resolution Stereo Camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.

A canyon was cut through the layers of different rock types after they formed, and is of particular interest to the Mars Science Laboratory mission. This canyon, similar to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, exposes layers of rock representing tens or hundreds of millions of years of environmental change.

This color picture of Mars -- a classic view of the rocky orange-red surface -- was taken July 21, 1976, the day following Viking l's successful landing on the Red Planet, which marked the first successful mission to Mars.

The reddish surface materials are thought to be limonite, or hydrated ferric oxide.

A false-color mosaic focuses on a deep canyon intersection amid Noctis Labyrinthus, where the geologic features meet to form a depression 4,000 meters deep. The blue-tinted dust lies on the upper surfaces, while the warmer-colored rockier material lies below.

The Deuteronilus Mensae region, seen here, in Mars' northern hemisphere, shows locations of ice deposits in blue that are more than 1 kilometer thick. The yellow lines indicate ground tracks of the radar observations from multiple orbits of the spacecraft used to capture the data.

Sand dunes mottled with blue-black spots lie next to a central hill within an unnamed, 120-kilometer-wide crater in eastern Arabia on Mars taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter in 2003 and 2004. False colors depict the nature of the ground surface: Areas with bluish tints have more fine sand at the surface, while redder tints indicate harder sediments and outcrops of rock.

Like many midlatitude Martian craters, this impact crater has gullies along its walls that are composed of alcoves, channels, and debris aprons. The origins of these gullies have been the subject of much debate; they could have been formed by flowing water, liquid carbon dioxide, or dry granular flows. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the image on April 13, 2010.

This view of an inverted crater in the Arabia Terra region of Mars is among the images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on January 29, 2010, as the spacecraft approached the 100-terabit milestone in total data returned.

This image shows the context for orbital observations of exposed rocks that had been buried an estimated 5 kilometers (3 miles) deep on Mars. It covers an area about 560 kilometers (350 miles) across, dominated by the Huygens Crater, which is about the size of Wisconsin.

A key aspect of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Extended Mission is the opportunity to turn the spacecraft and point the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) at specific features of interest.

One particular mesa of Arabia Terra in the lower northern plains of Mars looked to some like a human face. The feature was widely cited and popularized as a potential "alien artifact."

With such interest, a new high-resolution view was captured of the facelike mesa on April 8, 2001.

The dunes seen here, from a crater in Noachis Terra, west of the giant Hellas impact basin, are linear, and thought to be due to shifting wind directions. In places, each dune is remarkably similar to adjacent dunes, including a reddish band on northeast-facing slopes. Large angular boulders litter the floor between dunes.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, its backshell, and its heatshield are visible within this enhanced-color image of the Phoenix landing site taken on January 6, 2010, as the carbon-dioxide frost that blanketed the lander and surrounding terrain throughout the winter begins to subside. The image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This image -- taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 2, 2010 -- covers the northern edge of the largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars.

The margin of Olympus Mons is defined by a massive cliff many kilometers tall. At this location, it is nearly 7 kilometers tall. The cliff exposes the guts of the volcano, revealing interbedded hard and soft layers. The hard layers are lava and the soft layers may be dust or volcanic ash.

The Martian north polar is layered with an ice sheet that is much like the Greenland ice sheet on the Earth. Like that of Greenland, this Martian ice sheet contains many layers that record variations in the Martian climate over time. Sometimes icy layers can be ablated away when the climate is warm. Later the ice sheet can be buried by new ice layers and grow in size again. It's likely that many of these cycles have occurred over the ice sheet's history.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this image of north polar layered deposits on March 11, 2010.

This image from an observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter covers a small portion of the northwest quadrant of Hellas Basin, or Hellas Planitia, on southern Mars. With a diameter of about 2,200 kilometers and a depth reaching the lowest elevations on Mars, Hellas is one of the largest impact craters in the solar system.

This image -- taken from the Gordii Dorsum region of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on April 9, 2010 -- shows a large area covered with polygonal ridges in an almost geometric pattern. The ridges may have originally been dunes that hardened through the action of an unknown process. Groundwater may have been involved.

Mars, as seen on December 17, 2009.

Three images of the same location, captured at different times by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, show the dynamic changes in seasonal activity causing sand avalanches and ripples on a Martian dune.

Subsurface clay minerals at thousands of Martian sites exposed by crater impact and erosion were examined by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, suggesting a long period of wet, warm conditions, mostly underground.

On March 9, 2011, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this color image of Santa Maria Crater, showing NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity perched on the southeast rim.

Formed by harsh winds, fans and ribbons of dark sand dunes creep across the floor of the Bunge Crater in this image, taken in January 2006 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

In Ares Vallis, teardrop mesas stretch out behind impact craters caused by crater rims diverting floods where the ground was protected from erosion. Scientists estimate the floods that have caused these formations had peak volumes many times the flow of today's Mississippi River.

West of Valles Marineris lies a checkerboard named Noctis Labyrinthus, which formed when the Martian crust stretched and fractured. As faults opened, they released subsurface ice and water, causing the ground to collapse. This westward view combines images taken during the period from April 2003 to September 2005 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

This image, combining data from two instruments aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, depicts an orbital view of the north polar region of Mars.

The ice-rich polar cap seen at the center of the image is approximately 1,000 kilometers across. The white cap is riven with dark, spiral-shaped bands, visible as deep troughs that are in shadow.

To the right of center, a large canyon, Chasma Boreale, almost bisects the ice cap. Chasma Boreale is about the length of the United States' famous Grand Canyon and up to 2 kilometers deep.

A sea of dark dunes, sculpted by the wind into long lines, surrounds the northern polar cap covering an area as big as Texas in this false-color image taken in 2004 and 2004 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Areas with cooler temperatures are recorded in bluer tints, while warmer features are depicted in yellows and oranges.

Geological faulting has opened what is known as the Cerberus Crack - a 60 miles long canyon which cuts through mesas and plains on Mars. This image is composed of data captured from May 2002 to July 2004 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

This image shows layers of rock stacked like a staircase, their edges extending diagonally from top left to bottom right and stepping downward from the lower left of the photo to the top right. At the far left of the image is an eroded, round crater filled with a row of nearly parallel sand dunes. To the right of the crater, a pinkish-colored layer of light-toned rock within the staircase contains opal.

The eastern margin of a rippled dune in Herschel Crater on Mars moved an average distance of three meters between March 3, 2007, and December 1, 2010, as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The white line tracks the displacement between two ripples.

In just over three years, this rippled dune front in Herschel Crater moved an average of about two meters, as seen in these images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken between 2007 and 2010.

This image, taken January 26, 2012, shows NASA's no-longer-active Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft after its second Martian arctic winter. The scene was captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This image taken February 25, 2007, from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows sedimentary rock layering in which a series of layers are all approximately the same thickness.