Curiosity Discovered Evidence Of Water On Ancient Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover has found evidence of water on ancient Mars with "rippled textures" and "landslide debris" in the foothills of Mount Sharp.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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TechTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:06 The Curiosity rover has discovered lots of evidence of ancient lakes on Mars,
00:10 but what we saw in this panorama surprised us.
00:14 Curiosity is currently exploring Mount Sharp.
00:18 You can see the upper part of the mountain here.
00:21 The whole mountain is three miles tall, but we're down in the foothills.
00:25 In 2022, the rover started exploring a unique feature on Mars called the marker band.
00:32 It's a dark, thin layer of rock that stands out from the layers above and below it.
00:38 We first saw it in orbiter images years before we launched.
00:43 What created this winding layer of hard rock is a mystery,
00:46 but Curiosity can help us understand what formed the marker band.
00:53 We first discovered that the rocks within the marker band are really hard.
00:57 Curiosity has faced some challenges drilling into them.
01:00 Here's two of our attempts.
01:03 But we might find a softer spot on the road ahead.
01:08 Nearby, we found an exciting scientific clue.
01:12 These rippled textures were created billions of years ago by waves in a shallow lake.
01:20 We've climbed through many lake deposits during our mission,
01:23 but have never seen wave ripples this clearly.
01:31 This was especially surprising since the area we're in
01:34 probably formed at a time when Mars was becoming more dry.
01:43 Just above the rippled layer is another intriguing clue.
01:47 These rocks have a very repetitive pattern in their spacing and thickness.
01:52 We see lots of layers on Mars, but they're rarely this regular.
01:56 We're not sure what caused this rhythmic pattern.
01:59 Weather or climate cycles, like dust storms happening at periodic intervals,
02:03 are possible explanations.
02:17 Look at these gorgeous layered hills and cliffs that Curiosity is headed toward.
02:22 If this was on Earth, we'd probably make it a national park.
02:29 In the distance here, we can see debris in a valley called Geddes Vallis.
02:34 This was washed down here by wet landslides very late in Mount Sharp's history.
02:40 This landslide debris is probably the most recent evidence of water that we'll ever see.
02:45 It will allow us to study layers higher up on Mount Sharp
02:48 that we can't reach since they're so far up the mountain.
02:55 Curiosity has driven through some amazing scenery,
02:57 and we've learned so much about Mars' ancient climate.
03:01 But even after 10 years, there's so much more to explore.