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The steep path NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took to succeed in Gediz Vallis channel is indicated in yellow on this visualization made with orbital information. At decrease proper is the purpose the place the rover veered off to get an up-close take a look at a ridge fashioned way back by particles flows from larger up on Mount Sharp. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Berkeley
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The steep path NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took to succeed in Gediz Vallis channel is indicated in yellow on this visualization made with orbital information. At decrease proper is the purpose the place the rover veered off to get an up-close take a look at a ridge fashioned way back by particles flows from larger up on Mount Sharp. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Berkeley
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 Pink Planet’s floor. Billions of years in the past, Mars was a lot wetter and possibly hotter than it’s at the moment. 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 characteristic that—from area, at the least—seems to have been carved by an historical river.
That risk has scientists intrigued. The rover crew is trying to find proof that might affirm how the channel was carved into the underlying bedrock. The formation’s sides are steep sufficient that the crew does not assume the channel was made by wind. Nevertheless, particles flows (fast, 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 crammed with boulders and different particles. Scientists are additionally desperate to study 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 hundreds of thousands of years amid a altering Martian local weather, offering scientists with a method to research 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 a number of 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.
Pan round inside this 360-degree video to see Gediz Vallis channel from the standpoint of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Revising mount sharp’s timeline
It would take months to totally discover the channel, and what scientists study 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 the moment. Solely after these prolonged processes—in addition to intensely dry durations 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 crew a glimpse of what sorts of fabric could also be up there.
“If the channel or the particles pile had been fashioned 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 manner,” stated Curiosity’s venture scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
After arriving at Gediz Vallis channel, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree panorama utilizing one in every of its black-and-white navigation cameras on Feb. 3. The formation has scientists intrigued due to what it would inform them in regards to the historical past of water on the Pink Planet. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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After arriving at Gediz Vallis channel, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree panorama utilizing one in every of its black-and-white navigation cameras on Feb. 3. The formation has scientists intrigued due to what it would inform them in regards to the historical past of water on the Pink Planet. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
That clarification can be in line with some of the shocking discoveries Curiosity has made whereas driving up Mount Sharp: Water appears to have come and gone in phases, somewhat than regularly disappearing because the planet grew drier. These cycles will be seen in proof of mud cracks; shallow, salty lakes; and, straight 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 review 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 digital camera. 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 crew 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 Digicam, or Mastcam.