Mars. Photographs from the NASA Archives

Since Galileo first observed Mars in 1610, the Red Planet has been an endless source of fascination, inspiring human imagination and scientific inquiry. Explore its polar ice caps, windswept dunes, and more unique landscapes through the eyes of NASA’s orbiters, probes, and rovers, from the first flyby in 1965 to today’s Perseverance mission.

A Voyage to the Red Planet

Uncover the mysteries of Mars in six decades of NASA photographsEarly astronomers, drawn to Mars's fiery glow in the night sky, named the planet after their god of war. In the centuries since, Mars has captivated humankind as a source of endless speculation and a beacon of hope for its potential habitability. Through six decades of NASA’s pioneering research missions, the mysteries of the red planet have been gradually uncovered, revealing a world not so unlike our own that likely once supported life.

See the earliest close-up images of Mars taken by the Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965—the first ever captured of another planet—along with historical illustrations from an era when curiosity outpaced scientific progress. Science and art collide as NASA’s later orbiter missions capture aerial views of ancient riverbeds, polar ice caps, dust storms, vast canyons, and towering volcanoes in an endlessly varied landscape. As they traverse Mars’s rugged surface, NASA’s rovers have operated as mechanical extensions of humankind for the past 25 years, drilling holes, searching for traces of water, and marveling at mountain ranges and panoramic sunsets.

Through hundreds of cutting-edge photographs from NASA's extensive archives, we join their scientists in the ongoing quest to better understand Mars. Essays by NASA’s former Chief Scientist James L. Green and JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning provide an in-depth look at the history of Martian exploration and the challenges of preparing for these groundbreaking missions. Captions by planetary scientist Emily Lakdawalla skillfully illuminate each image's content and technical context, and a foreword by renowned poet Nikki Giovanni and an introduction by curator Margaret A. Weitekamp reflect on Mars’s significance in our cultural imagination.

From a distant enigma to a tangible frontier whose every grain of sand we can now observe, this volume celebrates the extraordinary progress NASA has made, bringing us closer than ever to understanding our neighboring world.

The contributing authors

Emily Lakdawalla is a planetary scientist, freelance science writer, educator, space artist, and namesake of asteroid (274860) Emilylakdawalla. Her first book, The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job, was published in 2018.

James L. Green, PhD, is NASA’s Chief Scientist. In a more than four decades-long career at the agency, where he also served as director of NASA’s planetary program, he has led more than a dozen successful missions, including the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, and the MESSENGER spacecraft to Mercury.

Margaret Weitekamp, PhD, is the chair of the Space History department at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where she curates the social and cultural history of spaceflight collection. In additional to her scholarly publishing, she also wrote an award-winning children’s book about Pluto.

Nikki Giovanni is a writer, educator, activist, and one of America’s most prominent poetic voices. She has published numerous collections of poems, essays, and children’s books, including Bicycles: Love Poems and Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech.

Rob Manning is Chief Engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as Chief Engineer for JPL’s Engineering and Science Directorate. He has been designing, testing, and operating robotic spacecraft for 40 years including Galileo to Jupiter, Cassini to Saturn, and Magellan to Venus, and many Mars missions.

Mars. Photographs from the NASA ArchivesHardcover with fold-outs, 30 x 30 cm, 2.92 kg, 340 pages

ISBN 978-3-8365-8646-7

Edition: Multilingual (English, French, German)