(ORDO NEWS) — Mars rover Curiosity has found the clearest evidence of ancient water ripples. Billions of years ago on Mars, waves on the surface of shallow water moved sediment at the bottom of a reservoir.
As the water evaporated and the planet dried up, the “imprints” of the waves turned into rocks, which were discovered by NASA‘s Mars rover.
Curiosity explored Gale Crater, which was a lake in ancient times. The rover climbed Mount Sharp, the base of which is considered the oldest, when Mars was still warm and humid.
However, these “petrified” ripples show that halfway to the top of the mountain is not as dry as the researchers expected.
This suggests that this place (and Mars in general) probably had a more complex and humid climate.
“This is the best evidence of water and waves we’ve seen on the entire mission,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasawada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“We’ve crossed thousands of feet of lake sediment and have never seen evidence like this, and now we’ve found it in a place we expected to be dry.”
The team of scientists planned to get a rock sample, but it turned out to be so hard that Curiosity failed several attempts to get it.
This isn’t the first time the rover has tried to find a soft enough spot to drill into rock. A similar situation occurred on the Vera Rubin Ridge, which is further down the mountain.
Even if the next attempts prove in vain, there are many other goals that the team intends to achieve in the coming weeks.
Along the way, Curiosity has a wind-hewn valley called the Gediz Valley, which is also likely to have been eroded by water due to a small river.
The team also points to the presence of layers in the rocks, which they describe as “rhythmic,” suggesting they were shaped by cyclical events such as dust storms or seasonal weather patterns.
“Wave ripples, debris flows and rhythmic layers all tell us that the history of the transition from wet to dry on Mars has not been easy,” Vasavada said.
“The ancient climate of Mars was remarkably complex, much like Earth‘s.”
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