NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered a vast landscape covered in honeycomb-like polygonal fractures on the surface of Mars. The unique geological formation stretches in all directions for as far as the rover’s cameras can see, far surpassing the scale of smaller patches previously encountered during the mission.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Discovers Vast Honeycomb Landscape on Mars
As the rover recently began climbing into a Martian valley nicknamed “Valle Grande,” it beamed back images of the geometric shapes. The polygonal fractures measure about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) across. The striking patterns extend across the valley floor and wrap around the sides of a nearby 20-foot (6-meter) tall butte capped with sand, which is nicknamed “Miraflores.”
The 360-degree panorama revealing the extent of the formation was captured on June 19 and 20, corresponding to the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days, or sols, of the mission.
Scientists Analyze Formation Theories and Water History
While small patches of geometric shapes have been spotted before by the mission, scientists noted that nothing matched the scale of the formation found in Valle Grande. We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,
said Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for the rover mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.
Researchers are investigating several possible mechanisms behind the honeycomb textures. While some polygons observed during previous missions clearly formed as mud cracks from drying sediment, a variety of other processes can contribute to such patterns. These include cycles of warm and cold temperatures, or compression that squeezed water from sediment when the surface was buried.
Understanding the origin of the polygons could help researchers reconstruct how water once shaped the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. Billions of years ago, lakes and streams dotted the lower foothills of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain, which Curiosity has been ascending since 2014.
Context Within a 14-Year Martian Mission
The new honeycomb landscape adds to an extensive record of geological discoveries made by the rover since it touched down on the Red Planet on August 5, 2012. Over nearly 14 years of exploration inside Gale Crater, the vehicle has encountered sulfur crystals, shiny meteorites, and rock layers preserving different parts of the planet’s environmental history.
The primary objective of the mission has focused on studying ancient riverbeds, rock layers, and mineral deposits to determine whether Mars could have supported life. While the rover has not found evidence that life existed, its findings have established that ancient Mars possessed water, useful chemistry, and nutrients—including carbon-based molecules considered precursors to RNA and DNA—that could have made microbial life possible.
As SciTechDaily reports, researchers continue to study the images and geological data returned by the mission to determine the exact formation processes and whether nearby dark-toned rocks are connected to the honeycomb terrain. Meanwhile, AOL notes that the rover is preparing to cross over into another band of darker-toned, rougher-textured materials in its ongoing climb up the mountain slopes.
