Curiosity rover searches for new clues about Mars’ ancient water

NASA’s Curiosity rover has begun exploring a brand new area of Mars, one that might reveal extra about when liquid water disappeared as soon as and for all from the Purple Planet’s floor. Billions of years in the past, Mars was a lot wetter and possibly 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 ultimately crosses the Gediz Vallis channel, a winding, snake-like function that—from space, a minimum of—seems to have been carved by an historic river.

That risk has scientists intrigued. The rover group is looking for proof that may verify how the channel was carved into the underlying bedrock. The formation’s sides are steep sufficient that the group does not assume the channel was made by wind. Nevertheless, particles flows (speedy, moist landslides) or a river carrying rocks and sediment might have had sufficient power to chisel into the bedrock. After the channel fashioned, it was full of boulders and different particles. Scientists are additionally desperate 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 fashioned over thousands and thousands of years amid a altering Martian local weather, offering scientists with a method 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 loads of water as soon as interacted with rock. Now the rover is exploring a layer enriched with sulfates—salty minerals that usually type as water evaporates.

Revising mount sharp’s timeline

It’ll take months to totally discover the channel, and what scientists be taught might 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 show the layers seen at this time. Solely after these prolonged processes—in addition to intensely dry intervals throughout which the floor of Mount Sharp was a sandy desert—might the Gediz Vallis channel have been carved.

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

“If the channel or the particles pile have been fashioned by liquid water, that is actually attention-grabbing. It could imply that pretty late within the story of Mount Sharp—after an extended dry interval—water got here again, and in an enormous method,” mentioned Curiosity’s challenge scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

That clarification can be in step with some of the stunning discoveries Curiosity has made whereas driving up Mount Sharp: Water appears to have come and gone in phases, slightly than progressively 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 yr, Curiosity made a difficult ascent to review the ridge, which drapes throughout the slopes of Mount Sharp and appears to develop out of the tip 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 exhibits the darkish sand that fills one aspect of the channel and a particles pile rising simply behind the sand. In the other way is the steep slope that Curiosity climbed to succeed in this space.

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