![]() ![]() ![]() Each mission has sharpened our view of the red planet. ![]() NASA has explored Mars for decades, with all kinds of spacecraft. Read: Why the Curiosity rover stopped singing to itself “It is unlikely at this point in my career that I will pilot a spacecraft down to the surface of Mars, but when you see this imagery, I think you will feel like you are getting a glimpse into what it would be like to land successfully,” Matt Wallace, the Perseverance mission’s deputy project manager at JPL, told reporters at a press conference yesterday. No one had ever viewed a Mars landing this clearly. An earlier rover, Curiosity, had captured some of its intense descent, but these data were something else entirely: the first time a spacecraft had recorded such high-definition footage of itself landing on the red planet. The engineers and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the stewards of this mission, had reacted similarly. What on Earth-no, what on Mars-did I just watch? And yet, after NASA released the video footage of the descent to the public yesterday, my jaw dropped. Its cameras captured the action from several angles, documenting a complex sequence to slow itself or else crash, erasing years of work in an instant. The spacecraft came barreling into the atmosphere at thousands of miles an hour. They knew just how much had to go right-and how much could go terribly wrong-in the next seven minutes. When NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance, took the plunge last week, the engineers at mission control braced themselves. Scientists think wet landslides also happened in this area, pushing boulders and other debris the size of cars to the valley floor.Īccording to Vasavada, “The wave ripples, debris flows, and rhythmic layers tell us that drying from wet to dry wasn’t a simple process on Mars.” “Mars’ past climate was very complex, just like the environment on Earth today.The descent of a little rover from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the surface is one of the most notoriously stressful occasions in space exploration. In addition, researchers are concentrating on Gediz Vallis, an ancient valley that may contain information about the planet’s once-watery past.Īccording to researchers, the valley was created by wind, although a channel that runs through it and begins higher up on Mount Sharp is believed to have been eroded by a tiny river. Even if they are unsuccessful in obtaining a sample from this peculiar piece of rock, they are still keen to visit other locations. This coming week, researchers will be searching for softer rock. The Curiosity rover has discovered rippling rock textures, but it has been unable to drill into them due to their extreme hardness. It is made up of layers, and as the Curiosity rover moves upward, the freshly generated layers enable researchers to examine how Mars changed from an old world with a climate more like Earth’s with a lot of water to the icy desert it is today. Mount Sharp is a 5-kilometre-tall mountain that was once covered in lakes and streams, creating a thriving environment for microbial life should it have ever developed on the Red Planet. Since 2014, the rover has been climbing Mount Sharp’s foothills. “This is the clearest indication of water and waves we have found throughout the entire mission,” Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist, said in a statement. Sulfates, salty minerals, were believed to have been left behind as water was drying up to a trickle in the area. The Curiosity rover has aided in the discovery of the mission’s most convincing proof so far of ancient lake-based water ripple formation.Īccording to NASA, waves on the surface of a shallow lake stirred up material at the lake’s bottom billions of years ago, leaving rippling textures in the rock over time.Īccording to scientists, the rock strata here were thought to have originated in drier environments than the locations the mission had previously examined. When Curiosity first landed on the “sulfate-bearing unit” in the Gale crater on Mars last October, researchers believed they had discovered the final indication that this area was formerly covered with lakes. Where experts believed there to be a dry area of land, the Curiosity rover discovered undulating rock textures on the surface, indicating an old lake once flowed there. UNITED STATES: The Curiosity rover, which has been trundling across Mars’ surface for more than ten years, has made an incredible revelation. ![]()
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