Mars Rover Finds Rippled Rocks Caused By Waves
NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered wave-rippled rocks, evidence of an ancient lake, in an area of Mars expected to be drier, the US space agency announced on Wednesday.
“This is the best evidence of water and waves we’ve seen in the entire mission,” said Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012, has returned stunning images of rippled patterns on the surface of rocks caused billions of years ago by the waves of a shallow lake.
Curiosity had previously discovered evidence of lakes covering parts of Mars in the salty minerals left behind when they dried up.
However, NASA scientists were surprised to discover such clear evidence of water in the Gale Crater, which the rover is currently exploring.
“During our mission, we’ve climbed through many lake deposits, but we’ve never seen wave ripples this clearly,” Vasavada said in a statement.
“This was especially surprising because the area we’re in probably formed when Mars was getting drier,” he explained.
Curiosity is exploring the foothills of Mount Sharp, a three-mile (five-kilometer) tall mountain.
According to NASA, the rover has also discovered debris in a valley washed down by wet landslides on Mount Sharp.
“This landslide debris is most likely the most recent evidence of water we’ll ever see,” Vasavada said. “We’ll be able to study layers higher up on Mount Sharp that we couldn’t before.”
According to NASA, Mount Sharp provides scientists with a “Martian timeline,” with the oldest layers at the bottom and the youngest at the top.
This enables them to “study how Mars evolved from a planet that was more Earth-like in its ancient past, with a warmer climate and abundant water, to the freezing desert it is today,” according to the statement.
Perseverance, another Mars rover, landed on the Red Planet in February 2021 to search for signs of past microscopic life.
