This August marks ten years since the landing of the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars. Since then, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) office has been conducting scientific activities, and regularly sends amazing pictures of local landscapes. This time, the rover captured a view of the landscape changing as it moved up the slope of Mount Sharp.
Over the last year of Curiosity’s journey up the slope of Mount Sharp, scientists have begun to pay more attention to the change in the structure of the rock. If a lot of clay is found in the lower areas of the slope, then as it goes up, the rover detects more sulfates. According to scientists, such places are typical for areas where streams have dried up and sand dunes have formed.
Thus, lacustrine sediments are less common in these areas than in the lower areas of the slope of Mount Sharp. “Instead, we see a lot of evidence of a drier climate, such as dry dunes around which streams flowed in the past.”says Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
In addition to the increase in sulfates, geological features are attracting scientists’ attention. They observe deposits that most likely formed in layers. Researchers believe that some of the deposits in the area were formed at a time when water was present on the planet’s surface, and sand dunes were washed by streams.
“The story gets even richer and more complex as it became known that there were several periods when groundwater receded and evaporated over time, leaving behind a jumble of puzzle pieces that Curiosity scientists must put together in an accurate chronology.”NASA said in a statement.
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