The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, explored various aspects of the Gale crater on Mars to understand more about this transition from hot and humid to dry and very cold.
The latest study, collected from data captured by one of the rover’s instruments, suggests that Mars actually made the transition back and forth between wetter and drier times before it completely lost its surface water about three billion years ago. year old.
Curiosity has been climbing Mount Sharp, 3 miles high, in the center of Gater Crater since 2014.
An instrument called the ChemCam is on the rover’s mast and includes a high-resolution camera and a laser that can vaporize rocks to help the rover analyze their chemical composition. ChemCam has an infrared laser that can heat pieces of rock to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This vaporizes the rock and creates plasma, allowing scientists to look essentially at the minerals and chemicals in the rock and look back at the geological history of the planet.
The ChemCam camera was used to capture observations of Sharp Mountain terrain, which reveals slices of the Martian past as the rock varies.
A history lesson on Mars
Mount Sharp is an interesting feature on Mars because it is one of the best ways in which the red planet has recorded the history of its climate, water and sediments.
“A major goal of the Curiosity mission was to study the transition from the living environment of the past to the dry, cold climate that Mars now has. These layers of rock recorded this change in detail,” said Roger Wiens, co-study. author of the paper and scientist of the ChemCam team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in a statement.
Orbiters around Mars have previously recorded information about minerals on the slopes of Mount Sharp. Curiosity data provided even more detailed observations of sedimentary rock layers and revealed dry and wet periods in the planet’s past.
Curiosity detects large changes in layers
As Curiosity climbed Mount Sharp, the layers changed dramatically.
The base of Mount Sharp is made of clay deposited by the lake that once filled the crater. Above are layers of sandstone that still retain evidence of how wind-shaped dunes were formed during the drier periods. The layers above this level reveal several deposits from the floodplain, indicating the time when wet conditions returned to Mars.
Curiosity’s observations show that these changes between the wet and dry eras were large-scale events that alternated until the planet became permanently arid. Climate recordings on Mount Sharp have allowed Curiosity to improve over time from 2.9 billion to 3.7 billion years ago.
As the rover continues its mission, Curiosity will continue to climb to the foot of Sharp Mountain and use its drill to further explore the types of rocks and what it reveals. This could provide more information about the cause of such drastic climate fluctuations.