EVIDENCE OF RIVER AND LAKE SEDIMENTS IN GALE CRATER: This evenly layered rock photographed by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit not far from where flowing water entered a lake. The
image shows a vertical cross section through geological layers typical of deposition by rivers, deltas and lakes. A delta builds where a river enters a
body of still water, such as a lake, and the current decelerates abruptly so sediment delivered by the river settles to the floor. The colour has been
approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
compounds, as well as any features that might show evidence of bio-
logical processes.
To do this, the rover is equipped with the largest, most advanced
suite of scientific instruments ever landed on the Martian surface, and it
is more mobile and flexible than previous rover missions. Curiosity analy-
ses in its on-board laboratory samples scooped up from the soil and
drilled from rocks. This is helping to assess the past Martian environment
through the structure and chemical composition of rocks and soils.
So far, the rover has been spectacularly successful. For instance, it
has identified a range of sediments of aeolian (wind), lacustrine (lake)
and fluvial (stream or river) origin, the latter confirming the importance
of water in the past evolution of the floor of Gale Crater and lower
slopes of Mount Sharp explored so far. As part of its two-year mission ex-
tension that began on 1st October, it is now continuing to head uphill,
towards areas containing more minerals associated with past water ac-
tion.
The MSL mission also had the goal of demonstrating the ability to
land a very large, heavy rover on the surface of Mars, using radical
new ‘sky-crane’ technology. Landing large payloads will be necessary
for any future Mars Sample Return mission to collect rocks and soils and
send them back to Earth. Such a mission is the proposed next stage in
the Mars Exploration Programme. Curiosity is also providing useful data
for use in future manned missions, as are all of the spacecraft and land-
ers operating at the Red Planet.
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