Images from NASA’s Curiosity mission could provide clues about climate change on Mars, including the drying up of a former water surface.
The findings were released last week in a NASA statement on the decade-long Curiosity mission.
“We no longer see the lake sediments that we saw deep at Mount Sharp years ago,” He said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Instead, we see plenty of evidence of drier climates, such as dry sand dunes, sometimes churned up by streams. This is a major change from the lakes, which may have existed for millions of years before.
Over the past year, the Curiosity probe traveled through a transition region from a “mud-rich region” to a sulfate-rich region, the statement said. The observations could provide a record of an ancient shift in climate change on the red planet.
Images of finger-like rocks have also supported the possibility that groundwater could have moved through certain regions of Mars.
It probably formed billions of years ago when groundwater rose, leaving minerals behind. In the Martian atmosphere, winds eroded the softer parts, leaving behind the hardest parts,” noted the Curiosity Rover Twitter account, along with an example of a single image.
Juveniles… rocks? I discovered these strange shapes while exploring them. It probably formed billions of years ago when groundwater rose, leaving minerals behind. In the Martian atmosphere, winds eroded the softer parts, leaving behind the harder parts. https://t.co/XKbiJuUMEC pic.twitter.com/U091p6DOf1
– Curiosity Rover (MarsCuriosity) 15. June 2022
Curiosity’s mission has already revealed images that support the view that ancient Mars experienced a climate that may have included long-lasting lakes.
Is not it?
I walk through a transition zone between a muddy and a sulfur rich area. Groundwater and its flow recede through these geological features over time, leaving a mystery that I, my team, can hardly wait to solve. https://t.co/umIr7ctS3r pic.twitter.com/gZ8aSzYwtn– Curiosity Rover (MarsCuriosity) 22. June 2022
In 2014, a study of Gale Crater suggested the flow of water and sediment may have been massive enough to build the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp.
“If our Mount Sharp hypothesis holds, it challenges the idea that warm, wet conditions on Mars were transient, local, or just underground,” Vasavada said He said In relation to previous results.
“The most radical explanation is that Mars’ thick ancient atmosphere pushed temperatures above freezing worldwide, but we don’t yet know how the atmosphere did it,” he added.
2013 NASA a notice Sedimentary rocks suggest that Mars once contained fresh water. Photos from 2012 also showed small rocks that appear to have been smoothed and shaped by the water.
Much speculation circulated online after a single image surfaced by Curiosity showing a “door” on Mars. However, NASA determined that despite the familiar door-like appearance, the image captured a natural geological feature.
Some of you noticed this picture I took on Mars. Sure, it may look like a small door, but it really is a natural geological feature! It may seem like a door just because your mind is trying to make sense of the unknown. (This is called “pareidolia”) https://t.co/TrtbwO7m46 pic.twitter.com/VdwNhBkN6J
– Curiosity Rover (MarsCuriosity) 18. May 2022
The discussion of water on Mars is not limited to the Curiosity mission. NASA has been studying evidence of ancient water on the planet since the 1970s.
“Scientists have traced ancient waterways through Mars since the 1970s, when orbiters revealed networks of branching valleys that match the dendritic shape of eroded valleys on Earth,” Science Magazine called. “In the 1990s, the Global Mars Surveyor program zoomed in on deeply dug rilles that only powerful water currents could carve — and perhaps even glimpses of shorelines of an ancient ocean.”