NASA Mars Rover Reveals Debris Left by a Powerful Ancient River

NASA Mars Rover Reveals Debris Left by a Powerful Ancient River

Curiosity managed to surmount a ridge thought to have first began to form 3 billion years ago, when the surface of Mars was still wet

Published |Updated

Adam Kovac

NASA’s Curiosity captured this 360-degree panorama while parked below Gediz Vallis Ridge (seen at right), a formation that preserves a record of one of the last wet periods seen on this part of Mars. After previous attempts, the rover finally reached the ridge on its fourth try. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Third time was the charm for NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has finally been able to crest a ridge overlooking what was once a powerful waterway on Mars.

The ridge is thought to have first began to form 3 billion years ago, when the surface of Mars was still wet, as water was driven down a mountain, carrying mud and boulders with it.

On Monday, NASA said in a press release that after two tries to summit the ridge, which is blocked by steep slopes and rocks, the rover had managed to get to the top on Aug. 14.

“After three years, we finally found a spot where Mars allowed Curiosity to safely access the steep ridge,” said Curiosity’s project scientist Ashwin Vasavada. “It’s a thrill to be able to reach out and touch rocks that were transported from places high up on Mount Sharp that we’ll never be able to visit with Curiosity.”

The rover spent 11 days on the ridge and snapped hundreds of photos, including 136 images that were used to create a 360-degree vista of the debris field, which included boulders the size of cars.

“I can’t imagine what it would have been like to witness these events,” said University of California, Berkeley geologist William Dietrich, who has helped lead Curiosity’s study of the ridge.

“Huge rocks were ripped out of the mountain high above, rushed downhill, and spread out into a fan below. 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.”

Curiosity was launched in November, 2011 and landed on the Martian surface on Aug. 5, 2012. Since then, it traveled almost 20 miles and sent back more than a million pictures of the planet.

Since 2014, Curiosity has slowly been climbing the three-mile tall Mount Sharp, finding evidence of ancient waterways along the way.

The rover’s next mission is to continue its climb up Mount Sharp by finding a path to the channel that feeds into the ridge. This will allow researchers to continue learning how water used to flow on Mars.