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Among the most stainless vehicles sent to Mars by man is certainly the Curiosity rover, which since 2012 has continued to collect data and move on the surface of the red planet, despite the signs of aging are playing their role and the wheels show obvious critical issues which sooner or later we will have to deal with.
Having said that, last December Curiosity moved inside what is called Marker Band Valley, where it also created this splendid overview that we propose to follow: But despite the beauty of the shot, it was not the most relevant element of the area as we will find out shortly.
The area was not among those taken into consideration for the search for signs of past water and to all intents and purposes it was thought to be the least predisposed, however thanks to further visual analysis, rippling rock structures were subsequently identified which represent “unequivocal signs” according to the team of scientists who analyzed them.
We thus discover that, billions of years ago, the waves on the surface of a shallow lake raised the sediments on the bottom, creating rippled structures that remained indelible in the rock over time. Here’s the hot comment from Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“This is the best evidence of water and waves we’ve seen of the entire mission. We’ve climbed through thousands of feet of lake deposits and we’ve never seen evidence like this – and now we’ve found it in a place we expected to be dry.” “.
Recall that since 2014 the rover has climbed the slopes of Mount Sharp, a 5 km high rocky area that was once dotted with lakes and streams and which it is hypothesized may have provided a rich environment for the development of life, even if only microbial.
Mount Sharp represents a unique study opportunity, since consists of layers arranged in temporal order, with the oldest at the bottom and the youngest at the top of the lineup. As the rover climbed, the elements available increased and allowed us to understand that Mars was not so different from Earth in its past. We know the climate was warmer, and water plentiful…definitely different from today’s frigid desert.
Marker Band Valley is located about 800 meters above the base of the mountain. The rock in this area is so hard that Curiosity hasn’t been able to collect a sample despite him making several attempts, but it’s not the first time this has happened. For example with Vera Rubin Ridge”, Curiosity had to try three times before finding a soft enough spot to succeed.
The scientists say they will look for a softer spot over the next week, but should that fail again, there will be many more sites to explore. For example, further on from the Marker Band is a wind-sculpted valley called Gediz Vallis, which may once have been flown by a stream originating higher up Mount Sharp.
Scientists also suspect that slow landslides have occurred here assisted by the action of the Water, which have sent boulders and debris, even the size of a car, towards the bottom of the valley. Curiosity caught glimpses of this debris at Gediz Vallis Ridge twice last year, but could only observe it from afar. An approach is planned by the end of the year.
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