The Curiosity Rover, a car-sized robot built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has been traversing the Martian terrain for a decade. Most recently, it made a ground-breaking discovery in the foothills of a Martian mountain. The rover took pictures of rippled rocks that provide the most robust evidence yet of ancient water waves on the Red Planet. These peculiar rocks are similar to the undulating patterns left behind by receding tides on a beach. Mission scientists believe they were possibly created billions of years ago by waves rippling on the surface of a shallow lake. The movement on top of the lake stirred up sediment from the bottom, resulting in the combed texture seen on the rocks today.
Ashwin Vasavada, who is Curiosity’s Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement that “this is the best evidence of water and waves that we’ve seen in the entire mission." The discovery came as a surprise since researchers expected this to be a dry area. This is because the rock layers here developed in drier settings than in other regions. The area’s sulfates, or salty minerals, are believed to have been left behind when water was drying up.
“Despite climbing through thousands of feet of lake deposits, we had never seen evidence like this before. It’s amazing to find it in a place where we expected it to be dry," Vasavada said.
Hanging out on the lakeshore with waves rippling around me… 🏖️Wait, that was billions of years ago? 😭Jokes aside, I spotted some major surprises in this region recently: ripples that formed within ancient lakes! Check out the full-res image here: https://t.co/gqfhAQ5Qwx pic.twitter.com/L9uml0jivL
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) February 8, 2023
Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending the foothills of a towering 5-kilometre mountain, Mount Sharp. This was once dotted with lakes and streams, providing a potential habitat for microbial life. The layered composition of Mount Sharp, with the oldest layers at the bottom and the youngest at the top, presents a Martian timeline for scientists to study the evolution of the planet from a warmer, water-rich environment to the present-day freezing desert.
Having climbed nearly 0.8 kilometres above the mountain’s base, the rover has found rippled rock textures preserved in the “Marker Band". This is a thin layer of dark rock distinct from the rest of Mount Sharp.
This discovery offers new insights into the water history of Mars and the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet. The findings are expected to provide a foundation for future missions to Mars and will continue to shape our understanding of this mysterious world. However, the rock layer is rather hard around these parts. Curiosity is yet to be able to drill a sample from it, despite several attempts.
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