Did Curiosity Find 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

00:00Music

00:06The Curiosity rover has discovered lots of evidence of ancient lakes on Mars,

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

00:15Curiosity is currently exploring Mount Sharp.

00:18You can see the upper part of the mountain here.

00:21The whole mountain is three miles tall, but we're down in the foothills.

00:25In 2022, the rover started exploring a unique feature on Mars called 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.

00:53We 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.

01:03But we might find a softer spot on the road ahead.

01:08Nearby, we found an exciting scientific clue.

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

01:20We've climbed through many lake deposits during our mission,

01:23but have never seen wave ripples this clearly.

01:31This was especially surprising since the area we're in

01:34probably 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,

02:04are possible explanations.

02:17Look at these gorgeous layered hills and cliffs that Curiosity is headed toward.

02:22If this was on Earth, we'd probably make it a national park.

02:29In the distance here, we can see debris in a valley called Geddes Vallis.

02:34This was washed down here by wet landslides very late in Mount Sharp's history.

02:40This landslide debris is probably the most recent evidence of water that we'll ever see.

02:45It will allow us to study layers higher up on Mount Sharp

02:48that we can't reach since they're so far up the mountain.

02:54Curiosity has driven through some amazing scenery,

02:57and we've learned so much about Mars' ancient climate.

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

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