README.md

---
license: cc-by-4.0
pretty_name: "NASA Mars Rover Image Catalog"
language:
  - en
description: "The NASA Mars Rover Image Catalog contains metadata for every raw image captured by the Perseverance (Mars 2020) and Curiosity (MSL) rovers on the surface of Mars. Perseverance has been exploring Jeze"
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
tags:
  - space
  - mars
  - perseverance
  - curiosity
  - mars2020
  - msl
  - rover
  - nasa
  - images
  - open-data
  - tabular-data
  - parquet
size_categories:
  - 100K<n<1M
configs:
  - config_name: default
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/mars_rover_images.parquet
    default: true
---

# NASA Mars Rover Image Catalog


<div align="center">
  <img src="banner.jpg" alt="NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars" width="400">
  <p><em>Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS</em></p>
</div>


*Part of a [dataset collection](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/space-probe-and-mission-datasets-69c3fe82d410a42b1e313167) on Hugging Face.*

## Dataset description

The NASA Mars Rover Image Catalog contains metadata for every raw image captured by the Perseverance (Mars 2020) and Curiosity (MSL) rovers on the surface of Mars. Perseverance has been exploring Jezero Crater since February 2021, investigating an ancient river delta for signs of past microbial life and caching samples for future Earth return. Curiosity has been climbing Mount Sharp in Gale Crater since August 2012, discovering evidence that Mars once had long-lived lakes and rivers with conditions suitable for life. Together, these rovers have captured over 2 million raw images using a variety of cameras: engineering cameras for navigation and hazard avoidance, science cameras for geological investigation, and specialized instruments like SuperCam and Mastcam-Z. This metadata catalog includes image timestamp, sol number, camera instrument, rover position (XYZ site frame), pointing angles, and download URLs -- enabling large-scale analysis of imaging patterns, traverse mapping, and targeted image retrieval without downloading terabytes of raw image data.

This dataset is suitable for **tabular classification** tasks.

## Schema

| Column | Type | Description | Sample | Null % |
|--------|------|-------------|--------|--------|
| `id` | Int64 | NASA-assigned unique integer image ID; monotonically increasing per mission | 1376809 | 0.0% |
| `mission` | str | Mission identifier: "mars2020" (Perseverance, Jezero Crater, landed Feb 18 2021) or "msl" (Curiosity, Gale Crater, landed Aug 6 2012) | msl | 0.0% |
| `sol` | Int64 | Martian solar day since rover landing (sol 0 = landing date, ~1.0275 Earth days per sol) | 4305 | 0.0% |
| `instrument` | str | Camera instrument name (e.g. "FRONT_HAZCAM_LEFT_A", "NAVCAM_LEFT", "MCZ_RIGHT", "MASTCAM_LEFT"; null rare) | MAST_RIGHT | 0.0% |
| `date_taken` | str | UTC datetime when image was captured on Mars | 2024-09-15T09:31:32.000Z | 0.0% |
| `date_received` | str | UTC datetime when image was received on Earth via Deep Space Network | 2024-09-16T18:31:47.000Z | 0.0% |
| `site` | Int64 | Terrain site index along the rover traverse; increments when the rover drives to a new location | 108 | 50.0% |
| `drive` | Int64 | Drive sequence number within a site; tracks individual driving sessions | 2528 | 50.0% |
| `rover_x` | float64 | Rover X position in local site frame (meters); coordinate origin at site establishment point | -69.7806 | 50.0% |
| `rover_y` | float64 | Rover Y position in local site frame (meters) | -30.7345 | 50.0% |
| `rover_z` | float64 | Rover Z position in local site frame (meters); typically near zero on flat terrain | -3.16259 | 50.0% |
| `mast_azimuth` | float64 | Remote sensing mast azimuth angle in degrees (0-360, clockwise from north) | 89.9076 | 50.0% |
| `mast_elevation` | float64 | Remote sensing mast elevation angle in degrees; positive = above horizon, negative = below | -28.6214 | 50.0% |
| `sample_type` | str | Image sampling mode: "full" (full-resolution), "subframe" (cropped region), "thumbnail" (reduced-resolution preview) | thumbnail | 0.0% |
| `local_mean_solar_time` | str | Local Mean Solar Time at image capture (format "sol HH:MM:SS"); approximates the position of the sun in the sky | Sol-04306M12:32:28.094 | 50.0% |
| `image_url` | str | Direct HTTPS URL to download the raw image from the NASA Mars Raw Images server | https://mars.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/... | 0.0% |
| `is_thumbnail` | bool | True if this row represents a thumbnail image (lower resolution preview), False for full/subframe images | True | 0.0% |
| `title` | str | Human-readable image title composed from instrument, sol, and sequence identifiers; may be null | Sol 4305: Mast Camera (Mastcam) | 0.0% |

## Quick stats

- **495,682** total images
- **247,841** Perseverance images (through sol 4,980)
- **247,841** Curiosity images (through sol 4,980)
- **11** camera instruments

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/nasa-mars-rover-images", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()
```

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

# Load all images
ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/nasa-mars-rover-images", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Perseverance images only
m2020 = df[df["mission"] == "mars2020"]

# Curiosity Mastcam images
mastcam = df[(df["mission"] == "msl") & (df["instrument"].str.contains("MAST", na=False))]

# Images per sol for Perseverance
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
sol_counts = m2020.groupby("sol").size()
sol_counts.plot(title="Perseverance images per sol")
plt.xlabel("Sol")
plt.ylabel("Image count")
plt.show()

# Rover traverse (XYZ positions)
positions = m2020.dropna(subset=["rover_x", "rover_y"])
positions.plot.scatter(x="rover_x", y="rover_y", s=0.1, title="Perseverance traverse")
plt.show()
```

## Data source

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/

## Update schedule

Weekly (Monday at 11:00 UTC) via [GitHub Actions](https://github.com/juliensimon/space-datasets). Incremental updates fetch only images added since the last run.

## Related datasets

- [juliensimon/esa-exomars-tgo-observations](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/esa-exomars-tgo-observations)

- [juliensimon/esa-mars-express-observations](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/esa-mars-express-observations)

- [juliensimon/mars-craters-robbins](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/mars-craters-robbins)

- [juliensimon/mars-perseverance-weather](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/mars-perseverance-weather)

- [juliensimon/mars-chemcam-compositions](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/mars-chemcam-compositions)

> If you find this dataset useful, please consider [giving it a like](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/nasa-mars-rover-images) on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

## About the author

Created by [Julien Simon](https://julien.org) — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the [Space Datasets](https://julien.org/datasets) collection.

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{nasa_mars_rover_images,
  title = {NASA Mars Rover Image Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/nasa-mars-rover-images},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}
```

## License

[CC-BY-4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)