Curiosity Discovered Evidence Of Water On Ancient Mars

Space.com

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

Transcript

00:00The Curiosity rover has discovered lots of evidence of ancient lakes on Mars,

00:10but what we saw in this panorama surprised us.

00:13Curiosity is currently exploring Mount Sharp.

00:17You can see the upper part of the mountain here.

00:20The whole mountain is three miles tall, but we're down in the foothills.

00:24In 2022, the rover started exploring a unique feature on Mars

00:29called the Marker Band.

00:32It's a dark, thin layer of rock that stands out from the layers above and below it.

00:38We first saw it in orbiter images years before we launched.

00:43What created this winding layer of hard rock is a mystery,

00:46but Curiosity can help us understand what formed the Marker Band.

00:52We first discovered that the rocks within the Marker Band are really hard.

00:57Curiosity has faced some challenges drilling into them.

01:00Here's two of our attempts.

01:02But we might find a softer spot on the road ahead.

01:06Nearby, we found an exciting scientific clue.

01:12These rippled textures were created billions of years ago by waves in a shallow lake.

01:18We've climbed through many lake deposits during our mission, but have never seen wave ripples this clearly.

01:31This was especially surprising since the area we're in probably formed at a time when Mars was becoming more dry.

01:43Just above the rippled layer is another intriguing clue.

01:47These rocks have a very repetitive pattern in their spacing and thickness.

01:52We see lots of layers on Mars, but they're rarely this regular.

01:56We're not sure what caused this rhythmic pattern.

01:59Weather or climate cycles, like dust storms happening at periodic intervals, are possible explanations.

02:06Look at these gorgeous layered hills and cliffs that Curiosity is headed toward.

02:21If this was on Earth, we'd probably make it a national park.

02:25In the distance here, we can see debris in a valley called Geddes Vallis.

02:33This was washed down here by wet landslides very late in Mount Sharp's history.

02:38This landslide debris is probably the most recent evidence of water that we'll ever see.

02:44It will allow us to study layers higher up on Mount Sharp that we can't reach since they're so far up the mountain.

02:51Curiosity has driven through some amazing scenery, and we've learned so much about Mars' ancient climate.

03:00But even after 10 years, there's so much more to explore.

03:04It will allow us to utilize this atmosphere and to treat the sea as a possible atmosphere.

03:14We'll see you there.

03:15And that's a really impressive atmosphere.

03:19We'll be looking for the planet of problems in the state of Utah below.

03:23We'll see you there.

03:25We'll see you there.

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