NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence of water on ancient Mars with "rippled textures" and "landslide debris" in the foothills of Mount Sharp.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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TechTranscript
00:00Music
00:06The Curiosity rover has discovered lots of evidence of ancient lakes on Mars,
00:10but what we saw in this panorama surprised us.
00:15Curiosity is currently exploring Mount Sharp.
00:18You can see the upper part of the mountain here.
00:21The whole mountain is three miles tall, but we're down in the foothills.
00:25In 2022, the rover started exploring a unique feature on Mars called the marker band.
00:32It's a dark, thin layer of rock that stands out from the layers above and below it.
00:38We first saw it in orbiter images years before we launched.
00:43What created this winding layer of hard rock is a mystery,
00:46but Curiosity can help us understand what formed the marker band.
00:53We first discovered that the rocks within the marker band are really hard.
00:57Curiosity has faced some challenges drilling into them.
01:00Here's two of our attempts.
01:03But we might find a softer spot on the road ahead.
01:08Nearby, we found an exciting scientific clue.
01:12These rippled textures were created billions of years ago by waves in a shallow lake.
01:20We've climbed through many lake deposits during our mission,
01:23but have never seen wave ripples this clearly.
01:31This was especially surprising since the area we're in
01:34probably formed at a time when Mars was becoming more dry.
01:43Just above the rippled layer is another intriguing clue.
01:47These rocks have a very repetitive pattern in their spacing and thickness.
01:52We see lots of layers on Mars, but they're rarely this regular.
01:56We're not sure what caused this rhythmic pattern.
01:59Weather or climate cycles, like dust storms happening at periodic intervals,
02:04are possible explanations.
02:17Look at these gorgeous layered hills and cliffs that Curiosity is headed toward.
02:22If this was on Earth, we'd probably make it a national park.
02:29In the distance here, we can see debris in a valley called Geddes Vallis.
02:34This was washed down here by wet landslides very late in Mount Sharp's history.
02:40This landslide debris is probably the most recent evidence of water that we'll ever see.
02:45It will allow us to study layers higher up on Mount Sharp
02:48that we can't reach since they're so far up the mountain.
02:54Curiosity has driven through some amazing scenery,
02:57and we've learned so much about Mars' ancient climate.
03:00But even after 10 years, there's so much more to explore.