Space and Physics
PUBLISHED
In an update on NASA's Curiosity rover, the team has revealed that the aging Martian robot has stumbled across new and intriguing features unlike anything we have seen on the Red Planet.
Curiosity has been rolling around on the Red Planet for the last 14 years. We would like to say that the rover is looking no worse for wear over this time, but that would be denying its heavily messed-up wheel. Nevertheless, the rover chugs on, and continues to find interesting and surprising features on the surface of Mars.
Earlier this year, the rover found itself in a sea of polygon structures likened to the "top of a Martian honeycomb", and dark-toned rocks scattered throughout the landscape. It is possible that these features are caused by activity on the planet, or even beyond.
"A still-to-be-resolved question is whether these are bits of Mars that 'floated' down from higher in the stratigraphy, were ejected from distant impacts outside of Gale crater, or are meteorites from beyond Mars altogether," the team explained in a July update.
"Examination of some previous dark 'float' rocks indicated the presence of nickel, common in meteorites but less so in Martian rocks, but are all of the dark-toned pebbles and cobbles meteorites? Further investigations should help in answering this question."
With that question still open, Curiosity has moved on to find a fresh mystery to add to the list.
This time, it is in the form of broad and shallow pits, dotted across the Martian bedrock at Mount Sharp, and described by the Curiosity team as "features unlike quite anything we have seen in the past".
"Pits are not uncommon – when resistant nodules or pebbles weather out of their host rock, they leave behind a void," the team explains in a recent update.
"But the pits of this week were much broader and shallower than past features and were not accompanied by obvious objects that were once in the pits."
Meanwhile, the bedrock itself was found to be pretty interesting, with changes in structure and texture seen over quite short distances, perhaps indicating changes in depositional conditions, despite the close proximity.
We shall have to wait to learn more of the discovery, and for more on those darkened rocks dotted around the place. Further study with Curiosity's ChemCam will hopefully help clear up these mysteries, before the rover goes and finds another one a few hundred meters down the Martian road.
