Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Mars rover views remarkable layered rock formations



interest took the pix with its Mast digicam (Mastcam) on Sept. eight. The rover team plans to assemble several massive, coloration mosaics from the multitude of pix taken at this place in the near future.
"curiosity's technology group has been just pleased to head on this road experience thru a piece of the american wasteland Southwest on Mars," stated interest mission Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The Martian buttes and mesas growing above the surface are eroded remnants of historical sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after lower Mount Sharp had fashioned.
"studying these buttes up close has given us a better expertise of historic sand dunes that shaped and had been buried, chemically changed through groundwater, exhumed and eroded to shape the panorama that we see these days," Vasavada said.
the brand new photographs constitute curiosity's remaining prevent within the Murray Buttes, wherein the rover has been riding for just over one month. As of this week, interest has exited those buttes towards the south, using as much as the base of the final butte on its manner out. on this place, the rover started out its latest drilling campaign (on Sept. nine). After this drilling is finished, interest will maintain farther south and higher up Mount Sharp, leaving at the back of those incredible formations.
interest landed close to Mount Sharp in 2012. It reached the base of the mountain in 2014 after correctly locating evidence on the encompassing plains that historic Martian lakes provided situations that would have been favorable for microbes if Mars has ever hosted lifestyles. Rock layers forming the bottom of Mount Sharp accrued as sediment within historic lakes billions of years in the past.
On Mount Sharp, interest is investigating how and while the liveable ancient situations regarded from the challenge's earlier findings advanced into situations drier and much less favorable for existence.

No comments:

Post a Comment