Upgraded 7 October 2026 at 15:53 IST
NASA’s Curiosity rover has actually recorded a spectacular picture of occur to Mars, exposing sunshine over ancient, wind-carved rock developments on Mount Sharp. Researchers state the yardang layer formed about 3 billion years back and might protect ideas to Mars’ wetter geological past.
Washington: NASA has actually launched a striking picture of strike the Martian surface area taken by its Curiosity rover, revealing sunshine bathing rugged crags formed billions of years earlier as the car-sized lorry continues to check out Earth’s planetary next-door neighbor.
Interest landed in 2012 in Gale Crater near the Martian equator, and given that 2014 has actually been climbing up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-km-tall) mountain increasing from the crater flooring. The image was taken by the six-wheeled rover’s Mastcam electronic camera about an hour after the sun increased above a landscape including wind-carved cliffs in the range.
“The bright craggy peaks in the distance are a rock layer that is quite different in appearance from all the layers the rover has driven through so far. We think it once was wind-blown sediment, maybe sand or maybe even ash that blew into the crater from nearby volcanic activity. After the sediment hardened into rock, eons of wind carved up the rock layer into ridges called yardangs,” stated planetary researcher Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Curiosity task researcher.
The yardang layer more than likely formed about 3 billion years earlier, around the very same time as the remainder of the mountain, according to Vasavada. This layer covers about 10 miles (16 kilometers) throughout the northwestern reaches of Mount Sharp.
“However, the yardang layer doesn’t appear to be part of the continuous stack of layers that make up the layer-cake of Mount Sharp. It was added on a little later. It’s above what geologists call an unconformity: a gap in time where previous layers eroded down before new layers were deposited on top,” Vasavada stated.
The rover on its progressive climb up the mountain has actually gotten upwards of 0.6 miles (1 km) in elevation, the most ever gotten on Mars, according to NASA.
Mount Sharp is constructed of layers, each tape-recording a duration of the world’s geological past. In studying these layers, researchers have actually found out more about bodies of water– lakes and streams– that long back covered this area, at a time when Mars was wetter and warmer than the cold and desolate location it is today.
Vasavada stated NASA hopes Curiosity will reach the yardang layer in 2027 or 2028, at which time it will utilize its instruments to inspect the geology there.
Interest has actually been studying the geology and environment of Mars and analyzing whether it as soon as bore conditions favorable to harboring microbial life. It is among 2 NASA rovers running on Mars. The Perseverance rover is presently passing through the margins of Jezero Crater in the northern hemisphere.
Interest’s brand-new picture of Martian dawn is definitely otherworldly.
“This scene has a wildness that reminds me of a road trip through Monument Valley, Arizona. You can almost feel the silence and the endless open space under the sky. But as familiar as that sounds, the sky is orange and the sunrise has shades of blue. It’s like Earth, but it’s definitely Mars,” Vasavada stated.