NASA’s Curiosity Rover Spots Unusual Fish-Scale Patterns on Mars

Whereas scouring a 50-million-year-old crater on Mars, the Curiosity rover stumbled upon a polygon-shaped sample that type of appears like a large reptile had shed its pores and skin throughout the planet’s floor. The rover’s current discover provides to the lengthy listing of bizarre and eerie photos of the alien world.

NASA’s six-wheeled robotic captured the photograph of the unusual rocks on April 7 whereas driving towards a small crater named Antofagasta. “Lots of the rocks we’ve pushed over have these unbelievable textures—hundreds of honeycomb-shaped polygons crisscross their floor,” Abigail Fraeman, deputy undertaking scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a weblog submit.

Curiosity used its two-camera Mastcam instrument to seize the above picture of the Martian terrain, revealing the planet’s historical rocks donning an odd, fish-scale-like look.

Tipping the scales

The peculiar, honey-comb sample drew the eye of NASA scientists for its sheer amount, stretching throughout the planet’s dusty floor for so far as Curiosity might see. “We’ve seen polygon-patterned rocks like these earlier than, however they didn’t appear fairly this dramatically ample, stretching throughout the bottom for meters and meters in our Mastcam mosaics,” Fraeman famous.

The group behind the Curiosity mission remains to be attempting to determine how the sample shaped on Mars’ rocks. “This week we continued to gather numerous photos and chemical knowledge that may assist us distinguish between completely different hypotheses for the way the honeycomb textures shaped,” Fraeman wrote.

On Earth, polygonal patterns type on the floor via the repeated growth and contraction of floor materials, which is principally pushed by cycles of freezing and thawing in chilly or arid environments. Mars could also be a dry, desert-like world right now, however scientists consider the planet as soon as possessed a thick ambiance and liquid water on its floor within the type of lakes and rivers, and presumably even an ocean.

The polygonal sample of those rocks subsequently could also be a sign of Mars’ historical waters and a clue to the planet’s earlier historical past.

Rover explorer

Earlier than reaching the Antofagasta crater, Curiosity was treading throughout a area stuffed with delicate zigzag ridges in Mount Sharp. The spiderweb-like options, generally known as boxwork formations, possible got here to be when groundwater deposited minerals in cracks that later hardened, suggesting water flowed on this a part of Mars later than scientists anticipated.

Earlier this month, the rover moved onto the small crater that was named after a area and main metropolis in Chile subsequent to the Atacama. NASA scientists consider Antofagasta is a comparatively younger crater, which shaped lower than 50 million years in the past. Due to this fact, there could also be materials in or across the crater that was uncovered to the tough radiation setting on Mars extra not too long ago.

The Curiosity rover not too long ago made a significant discovery, detecting greater than 20 organic molecules in clay-rich Martian sandstones. Scientists consider a few of these natural molecules might have been components of life on Earth, including to the rising physique of proof that means Mars’ historical habitability.