NASA’s Curiosity Rover Sees Martian ‘Spiderwebs’ Up Shut

For about six months, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has been exploring a area stuffed with geologic formations known as boxwork, low ridges standing roughly 3 to six toes (1 to 2 meters) tall with sandy hollows in between. Crisscrossing the floor for miles, the formations recommend historic groundwater flowed on this a part of the Crimson Planet later than scientists anticipated. This chance raises new questions on how lengthy microbial life may have survived on Mars billions of years in the past, earlier than rivers and lakes dried up and left a freezing desert world behind.

The boxwork formations appear to be large spiderwebs when considered from area. To clarify the shapes, scientists have proposed that groundwater as soon as flowed via massive fractures within the bedrock, forsaking minerals. These minerals then strengthened the areas that turned ridges whereas different parts with out mineral reinforcement had been finally hollowed out by wind.

Till Curiosity arrived at this area, nonetheless, nobody may make sure what these formations appeared like up shut, and there have been much more questions on how they had been made.

Though Earth additionally has boxwork ridges, they’re not often taller than a couple of centimeters and are normally present in caves or in dry, sandy environments. The Curiosity workforce needed to get an in depth have a look at the Martian formations and collect extra information. This posed an actual problem for rover drivers: They wanted to ship directions to Curiosity, an SUV-size automobile that weighs practically a ton (899 kilograms), in order that it may roll throughout the tops of ridges not a lot wider than the rover itself.

“It nearly looks like a freeway we are able to drive on. However then we now have to go down into the hollows, the place it’s essential be aware of Curiosity’s wheels slipping or having bother turning within the sand,” stated operations techniques engineer Ashley Stroupe of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which constructed Curiosity and leads the mission. “There’s all the time an answer. It simply takes making an attempt completely different paths.”

For scientists, the problem is piecing collectively how such an enormous community of boxwork may exist on Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain the rover has been ascending. Every layer of the mountain fashioned in a unique period of Mars’ historic, altering local weather. The upper Curiosity goes, the extra the panorama bears indicators that water was drying out over time, with occasional moist durations that noticed the return of rivers and lakes.

“Seeing boxwork this far up the mountain suggests the groundwater desk needed to be fairly excessive,” stated Tina Seeger of Rice College in Houston, one of many mission scientists main the boxwork investigation. “And which means the water wanted for sustaining life may have lasted for much longer than we thought trying from orbit.”

Earlier orbital imagery included one essential piece of proof: darkish traces working throughout the “spiderwebs.” In 2014, it was proposed that these traces is likely to be what are generally known as central fractures, the place groundwater seeped via rock cracks and allowed minerals to pay attention. Investigating the ridges up shut, Curiosity discovered that these traces are the truth is fractures, lending weight to that speculation.

The rover additionally found bumpy textures known as nodules, an apparent signal of previous groundwater that has been noticed many occasions by Curiosity and different Mars missions. Unexpectedly, these nodules weren’t discovered close to the central fractures, however alongside a ridge’s partitions and the hollows between them.

“We are able to’t fairly clarify but why the nodules seem the place they do,” Seeger stated. “Possibly the ridges had been cemented by minerals first, and later episodes of groundwater left nodules round them.”

A significant a part of Curiosity’s science facilities on rock samples collected by the rock-pulverizing drill on the top of the rover’s robotic arm. The ensuing powder may be trickled into advanced science devices within the automobile’s physique for evaluation.

Final 12 months, three samples from the boxwork area — one from a ridgetop, one from bedrock inside a hole, and one from a transitional space earlier than Curiosity reached the ridges — had been collected by the drill and analyzed with X-rays and a high-temperature oven. The X-ray analyses discovered clay minerals within the ridge and carbonate minerals within the hole, offering further clues to assist perceive how these options fashioned.

The mission lately collected a fourth pattern, which was analyzed with a particular method reserved for probably the most intriguing science targets: After the pulverized rock went into the rover’s high-temperature oven, chemical reagents reacted with the pattern to conduct what is known as moist chemistry. The ensuing reactions make it simpler to detect sure natural compounds, carbon-based molecules essential to the formation of life.

Someday in March, Curiosity will go away the boxwork formations behind. The entire area is a part of a layer on Mount Sharp enriched in salty minerals known as sulfates, which fashioned as water was drying out on Mars. Curiosity’s workforce plans to proceed exploring this sulfate layer for a lot of miles within the coming 12 months, studying extra about how the traditional Crimson Planet’s local weather modified billions of years in the past.

Curiosity was constructed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as a part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.

To study extra about Curiosity, go to:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

2026-013