Drag your mouse or move your phone to pan around within this 360-degree view to explore the boxwork patterns on Mars that NASA\u2019s Curiosity is investigating for the first time. The rover captured the 291 images that make up this mosaic between May 15 and May 18.
Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS<\/p>\n
The rover recently drilled a sample from a new region with features that could reveal whether Mars\u2019 subsurface once provided an environment suitable for life.<\/p>\n
New images from NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover show the first close-up views of a region scientists had previously observed only from orbit. The images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago. The Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren\u2019t sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today.<\/p>\n
By the time Curiosity\u2019s current location formed, the long-lived lakes were gone in Gale Crater, the rover\u2019s landing area, but water was still percolating under the surface\u00ad. The rover found dramatic evidence of that groundwater when it encountered crisscrossing low ridges, some just a few inches tall, arranged in what geologists call a boxwork pattern. The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike. Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.<\/p>\n
The ridges Curiosity has seen so far look a bit like a crumbling curb. The boxwork patterns stretch across miles of a layer on Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain whose foothills the rover has been climbing since 2014. Intriguingly, boxwork patterns haven\u2019t been spotted anywhere else on the mountain, either by Curiosity or orbiters passing overhead.<\/p>\n
\u201cA big mystery is why the ridges were hardened into these big patterns and why only here,\u201d said Curiosity\u2019s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. \u201cAs we drive on, we\u2019ll be studying the ridges and mineral cements to make sure our idea of how they formed is on target.\u201d<\/p>\n
Important to the boxwork patterns\u2019 history is the part of the mountain where they\u2019re found. Mount Sharp consists of multiple layers, each of which formed during different eras of ancient Martian climate. Curiosity essentially \u201ctime travels\u201d as it ascends from the oldest to youngest layers, searching for signs of water and environments that could have supported ancient microbial life.<\/p>\n
The rover is currently exploring a layer with an abundance of salty minerals called magnesium sulfates, which form as water dries up. Their presence here suggests this layer emerged as the climate became drier. Remarkably, the boxwork patterns show that even in the midst of this drying, water was still present underground, creating changes seen today.<\/p>\n
Scientists hope to gain more insight into why the boxwork patterns formed here, and Mars recently provided some unexpected clues. The bedrock between the boxwork ridges has a different composition than other layers of Mount Sharp. It also has lots of tiny fractures filled with white veins of calcium sulfate, another salty mineral left behind as groundwater trickles through rock cracks. Similar veins were plentiful on lower layers of the mountain, including one enriched with clays, but had not been spotted in the sulfate layer until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really surprising,\u201d said Curiosity\u2019s deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman of JPL. \u201cThese calcium sulfate veins used to be everywhere, but they more or less disappeared as we climbed higher up Mount Sharp. The team is excited to figure out why they\u2019ve returned now.\u201d<\/p>\n
On June 8<\/a>, Curiosity set out to learn about the unique composition of the bedrock in this area, using the drill on the end of its robotic arm to snag a sample of a rock nicknamed \u201cAltadena.\u201d The rover then dropped the pulverized sample into instruments within its body for more detailed analysis.<\/p>\n Drilling additional samples from more distant boxwork patterns, where the mineral ridges are much larger, will help the mission make sense of what they find. The team will also search for organic molecules<\/a> and other evidence of an ancient habitable environment preserved in the cemented ridges.<\/p>\n As Curiosity continues to explore, it will be leaving a new assortment of nicknames<\/a> behind, as well. To keep track of features on the planet, the mission applies nicknames to each spot the rover studies, from hills it views with its cameras to specific calcium sulfate veins it zaps with its laser. (Official names, such as Aeolis Mons \u2014 otherwise known as Mount Sharp \u2014 are approved by the International Astronomical Union.)<\/p>\n The previous names were selected from local sites in Southern California, where JPL is based. The Altadena sample, for instance, bears the name of a community near JPL that was severely burned during January\u2019s Eaton Canyon fire<\/a>. Now on a new part of their Martian map, the team is selecting names from around Bolivia\u2019s Salar de Uyuni, Earth\u2019s largest salt flat. This exceptionally dry terrain crosses into Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert, and astrobiologists study both the salt flat and the surrounding desert because of their similarity to Mars\u2019 extreme dryness.<\/p>\n Curiosity was built by NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA\u2019s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.<\/p>\n For more about Curiosity, visit:<\/p>\n science.nasa.gov\/mission\/msl-curiosity<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Andrew Good Karen Fox \/ Molly Wasser 2025-080<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drag your mouse or move your phone to pan around within this 360-degree view to explore the boxwork…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[13453,17387,790,17388,3890,70,413,3891,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-208481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-curiosity-rover","9":"tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","10":"tag-mars","11":"tag-mars-science-laboratory-msl","12":"tag-planets","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-the-solar-system","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov<\/a><\/p>\n
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov<\/a> \/ molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov<\/a><\/p>\n