NASA's Curiosity rover takes striking image of dawn on Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a new image of dawn on Mars, revealing wind-carved rock layers known as yardangs on Mount Sharp. Scientists hope to study these geological formations to better understand the planet's ancient, wetter climate.
Why it matters
Ongoing exploration of Mars provides critical data on the planet's geological history and its potential for past habitability.
Curiosity landed in 2012 in Gale Crater near the Martian equator, and since 2014 has been climbing Mount Sharp, a five-kilometre-tall mountain rising from the crater floor.
The image was taken by the six-wheeled rover's Mastcam camera about an hour after the sun rose above a landscape featuring wind-carved cliffs in the distance.
"The bright craggy peaks in the distance are a rock layer that is quite different in appearance from all the layers the rover has driven through so far," said planetary scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Curiosity project scientist.
NASA believes that some kind of wind-blown sediment landed in the crater from nearby volcanic activity. Once it hardened into rock, "eons of wind carved up the rock layer into ridges called yardangs," Vasvada said.
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