Curiosity rover searches for brand spanking new clues about Mars’ historical water

NASA’s Curiosity rover has begun exploring a brand new area of Mars, one that would reveal extra about when liquid water disappeared as soon as and for all from the Pink Planet’s floor. Billions of years in the past, Mars was a lot wetter and doubtless hotter than it’s at this time. Curiosity is getting a brand new look into that extra Earth-like previous because it drives alongside and finally crosses the Gediz Vallis channel, a winding, snake-like function that—from area, not less than—seems to have been carved by an historical river.

That risk has scientists intrigued. The rover workforce is looking for proof that will affirm how the channel was carved into the underlying bedrock. The formation’s sides are steep sufficient that the workforce does not suppose the channel was made by wind. Nevertheless, particles flows (fast, moist landslides) or a river carrying rocks and sediment may have had sufficient vitality to chisel into the bedrock. After the channel shaped, it was crammed with boulders and different particles. Scientists are additionally wanting to be taught whether or not this materials was transported by particles flows or dry avalanches.

Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending the foothills of Mount Sharp, which stands 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the ground of Gale Crater. The layers on this decrease a part of the mountain shaped over tens of millions of years amid a altering Martian local weather, offering scientists with a technique to examine how the presence of each water and the chemical elements required for all times modified over time.

For instance, a decrease a part of these foothills included a layer wealthy in clay minerals the place numerous water as soon as interacted with rock. Now the rover is exploring a layer enriched with sulfates—salty minerals that always kind as water evaporates.

Revising mount sharp’s timeline

It’s going to take months to totally discover the channel, and what scientists be taught may revise the timeline for the mountain’s formation.

As soon as the sedimentary layers of decrease Mount Sharp had been deposited by wind and water, erosion whittled them down to reveal the layers seen at this time. Solely after these prolonged processes—in addition to intensely dry durations throughout which the floor of Mount Sharp was a sandy desert—may the Gediz Vallis channel have been carved.

Scientists suppose the boulders and different particles that subsequently crammed the channel got here from excessive up on the mountain, the place Curiosity won’t ever go, giving the workforce a glimpse of what sorts of fabric could also be up there.

“If the channel or the particles pile had been shaped by liquid water, that is actually fascinating. It will imply that pretty late within the story of Mount Sharp—after a protracted dry interval—water got here again, and in a giant method,” mentioned Curiosity’s mission scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

That clarification could be according to probably the most shocking discoveries Curiosity has made whereas driving up Mount Sharp: Water appears to have come and gone in phases, relatively than step by step disappearing because the planet grew drier. These cycles might be seen in proof of mud cracks; shallow, salty lakes; and, immediately beneath the channel, cataclysmic particles flows that piled as much as create the sprawling Gediz Vallis ridge.

Final 12 months, Curiosity made a difficult ascent to check the ridge, which drapes throughout the slopes of Mount Sharp and appears to develop out of the top of the channel, suggesting each are a part of one geologic system.

Viewing the channel up shut

Curiosity documented the channel with a 360-degree black-and-white panorama from the rover’s left navigation digicam. Taken on Feb. 3 (the 4,086th Martian day, or sol, of the mission), the picture reveals the darkish sand that fills one aspect of the channel and a particles pile rising simply behind the sand. In the wrong way is the steep slope that Curiosity climbed to achieve this space.

The rover takes these sorts of panoramas with its navigation cameras on the finish of every drive. Now the science workforce is counting on the navcams much more whereas engineers attempt to resolve a problem that’s limiting using one imager belonging to the colour Mast Digital camera, or Mastcam.