Mars Curiosity rover tagged posts

NASA’s Curiosity rover is preparing for the next leg of its journey, a months-long trek to a formation called the boxwork, a set of weblike patterns on Mars’s surface that stretches for miles. It will soon leave behind Gediz Vallis channel, an area wrapped in mystery. How the channel formed so late during a transition to a drier climate is one big question for the science team. Another mystery is the field of white sulfur stones the rover discovered over the summer.

Curiosity imaged the stones, along with features from inside the channel, in a 360-degree panorama before driving up to the western edge of the channel at the end of September.

The rover is searching for evidence that ancient Mars had the right ingredients to support microbial life, if any formed billions of years ag...

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows a site with a network of prominent mineral veins below a cap rock ridge on lower Mount Sharp. The APXS instrument on Curiosity discovered unusual material in these veins that has the highest germanium concentrations found in Gale Crater. Credit: NASA

New data gathered by the Mars Curiosity rover indicates a potential history of hydrothermal activity at Gale Crater on the red planet, broadening the variety of habitable conditions once present there, scientists report in a new study. Researchers found concentrations of the elements zinc and germanium to be 10 to 100 times greater in sedimentary rocks in Gale Crater compared to the typical Martian crust.

Zinc and germanium tend to be enriched together in high temp...