NASA’s Curiosity rover reaches Mars ridge where water left debris pileup

Three billion years in the past, amid one of many final moist durations on Mars, highly effective particles flows carried mud and boulders down the aspect of a hulking mountain. The particles unfold right into a fan that was later eroded by wind right into a towering ridge, preserving an intriguing document of the Purple Planet’s watery previous.

Now, after three makes an attempt, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has reached the ridge, capturing the formation in a 360-degree panoramic mosaic. Earlier forays have been stymied by knife-edged “gator-back” rocks and too-steep slopes. Following probably the most troublesome climbs the mission has ever confronted, Curiosity arrived Aug. 14 at an space the place it may examine the long-sought ridge with its 7-foot (2-meter) robotic arm.

“After three years, we lastly discovered a spot the place Mars allowed Curiosity to soundly entry the steep ridge,” mentioned Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s mission scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is a thrill to have the ability to attain out and contact rocks that have been transported from locations excessive up on Mount Sharp that we’ll by no means be capable to go to with Curiosity.”

The rover has been ascending the decrease a part of 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp since 2014, discovering proof of historic lakes and streams alongside the best way. Totally different layers of the mountain symbolize completely different eras of Martian historical past. As Curiosity ascends, scientists be taught extra about how the panorama modified over time. Gediz Vallis Ridge was among the many final options on the mountain to kind, making it one of many youngest geological time capsules Curiosity will see.

Uncommon peek

The rover spent 11 days on the ridge, busily snapping images and finding out the composition of darkish rocks that clearly originated elsewhere on the mountain. The particles flows that helped kind Gediz Vallis Ridge carried these rocks—and others decrease on the ridgeline, some as giant as automobiles—down from layers excessive on Mount Sharp. These rocks present a uncommon perception into materials from the higher mountain that Curiosity can study.

The rover’s arrival on the ridge has additionally offered scientists the primary up-close views of the eroded remnants of a geologic characteristic generally known as a particles movement fan, the place particles flowing down the slope spreads out right into a fan form. Particles movement followers are frequent on each Mars and Earth, however scientists are nonetheless studying how they kind.

“I can not think about what it might have been prefer to witness these occasions,” mentioned geologist William Dietrich, a mission staff member on the College of California, Berkeley, who has helped lead Curiosity’s examine of the ridge. “Enormous rocks have been ripped out of the mountain excessive above, rushed downhill, and unfold out right into a fan under. The outcomes of this marketing campaign will push us to raised clarify such occasions not simply on Mars, however even on Earth, the place they’re a pure hazard.”

On Aug. 19, the rover’s Mastcam captured 136 pictures of a scene at Gediz Vallis Ridge, that when pieced collectively right into a mosaic, present a 360-degree view of the encompassing space. Seen in that panorama is the trail Curiosity took up the mountainside, together with via “Marker Band Valley,” the place proof of an historic lake was found.

Whereas scientists are nonetheless poring over the imagery and information from Gediz Vallis Ridge, Curiosity has already turned to its subsequent problem: discovering a path to the channel above the ridge in order that scientists can be taught extra about how and the place water as soon as flowed down Mount Sharp.