With all the news about NASA's Perseverance rover and its helicopter sidekick, it can be easy to forget it's not the only rover trundling around Mars. Curiosity has been hard at work exploring the red planet for more than a decade, and NASA has announced it finally reached a fascinating geological formation after two failed attempts. To celebrate, NASA has released a 360-degree video of Gediz Vallis Ridge, which scientists believe is a remnant of massive flooding in the planet's past.
Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp, the central peak in Gale Crater. The first two times scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) attempted to reach the ridge, the rover was turned back by sharp "gator-back" rocks and steep slopes. Rather than risk toppling the robot, the team looked for other routes. Finally, on Aug. 14, the team found an area where Curiosity could access the formation.
Gediz Vallis Ridge covers a large patch of the mountainside, reaching a height of 70 feet (21 meters). Geologists believe the ridge is an example of a debris flow fan, a type of formation seen on both Earth and Mars associated with water flowing downhill. The ridge was then eroded over billions of years as Mars dried up, but the debris remains.
The team was anxious to get a closer look at Gediz Vallis Ridge because it contains dark rocks, some as large as a car, that were transported to their current location from higher on the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain. That means the rover can study samples from regions where it will never be able to reach because of the steep incline.
Curiosity spent 11 days studying Gediz Vallis Ridge, snapping photos and taking measurements from the anomalous dark rocks. "Huge rocks were ripped out of the mountain high above, rushed downhill, and spread out into a fan below," says geologist and Curiosity team member William Dietrich. "The results of this campaign will push us to better explain such events not just on Mars, but even on Earth, where they are a natural hazard."
On Aug. 19, the rover used its Mastcam to capture 136 images of the scene, which were stitched together to create the mosaic above. It's a full 360-degree video, so make sure to drag around to see how the ridge rises up, peppered with dark rocks that stand out from the rest of the landscape.
Scientists are still analyzing the data from Gediz Vallis Ridge, but the robot is already on to the next adventure. It has charted a course to the channel above the ridge. Scientists hope this will help them determine how and when water flowed down the slopes of Mount Sharp to create Gediz Vallis Ridge.
