The ever-reliable Curiosity rover is about to start a brand new quest to check big “spiderwebs” on Mars’ floor, after efficiently concluding its earlier mission, NASA has introduced. The web-like rocks span for miles and should maintain secrets and techniques concerning the Red Planet’s watery previous.
Over the final 12 months, Curiosity has been exploring Gediz Vallis — a channel carved into the steep slopes of Mount Sharp on the coronary heart of Gale Crater. During this stage of its 12-year mission on Mars, the rover made some vital discoveries, together with by accident unveiling crystals of pure sulfur and discovering “wavey” rocks left behind by an historical lake. Mission scientists additionally first seen a giant gap in one of many rover’s wheels because the wandering robotic traversed this area’s steep slopes.
But the rover’s time in Gediz Vallis is about to return to an in depth. On Nov. 18, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) launched a ultimate 360-degree “selfie” of the realm taken by Curiosity because it ready to go off on the following leg of its epic journey, which has already lasted a decade longer than initially anticipated.
Curiosity’s subsequent goal is a big assortment of spiderweb-like floor options, generally known as “the boxwork,” spanning between 6 and 12 miles (10 and 20 kilometers) throughout. This uncommon patchwork of zig-zagging rocks, or boxwork deposits, was first noticed a long time in the past however has by no means been studied up shut, in line with a JPL assertion.
The web-like options shouldn’t be confused with the notorious “spiders on Mars” — a geological characteristic created when carbon dioxide ice on the planet’s floor sublimates, or turns into fuel from a stable. Scientists not too long ago recreated these unusual options on Earth for the primary time.
Related: 32 issues on Mars that appear like they should not be there
Boxwork deposits are additionally present in caves on Earth. They type when calcite-rich water fills gaps between rocks and hardens earlier than finally eroding away, creating “skinny blades of crystalline materials protruding from rocky partitions” much like stalactites and stalagmites, in line with the National Speleological Society. The greatest examples of this on our planet are present in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, in line with the U.S. Geological Service. However, terrestrial boxwork options are by no means various ft broad.
Martian boxwork, which has been recognized at a number of places throughout the Red Planet, is believed to type through the same course of as terrestrial boxwork. However, as an alternative of water dripping by caves, the sprawling mineral veins have been left behind by the final remnants of historical, mineral-rich lakes and oceans.
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Researchers hope that Curiosity will be taught extra about precisely how this occurred and what it will probably inform us about Mars’ watery previous. Mission scientists are significantly within the minerals that make up these web-like constructions as a result of they may make clear whether or not extraterrestrial life as soon as existed on the Red Planet.
“These ridges will embrace minerals that crystallized underground, the place it might have been hotter, with salty liquid water flowing by,” Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity mission scientist at Rice University in Houston who has been learning the realm, stated within the assertion. “Early Earth microbes may have survived in the same surroundings. That makes this an thrilling place to discover.”
Curiosity will arrive on the boxwork in some unspecified time in the future in early 2025.
