Experts have weighed in after NASA'S Curiosity Rover captured some snaps of its workplace on the red planet showing 'well persevered' patterns on the surface.
NASA's Curiosity is a small robotic explorer, which is part of the Mars Science Laboratory's mission to explore the Gale crater and Mount Sharp on the red planet.
The rover was designed by NASA to investigate the Martian climate, geology, and more importantly, to find out whether the planet was once habitable for microbial life.
The rover was launched way back in 2012, where it was placed on a two-year mission. However, since the rover continued to yield valuable scientific data beyond that timeframe, NASA made the decision to extend its mission indefinitely.
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Thanks to the Curiosity rover's power source, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, it is able to last well beyond the original two years, allowing it to continue to send back data, including its latest findings this week.
NASA's Curiosity Rover's new findings explained
Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick, said images captured by the rover show that the ground was 'full of rough, gnarly material, which can be tricky targets for contact science instruments'.
She followed on by revealing that Curiosity’s Front Hazard Avoidance Camera had captured 'amazingly well preserved polygonal shaped fractures', which she claimed looked like a 'patchwork of honeycombs, or maybe a patch of waffles'.
Of course, with the Curiosity rover having been up in the stars now for 13 years, these aren't the first unusual images to have come out of the mission. However, they are the most impressively well preserved, and extensive, with the polygonal shaped fractures covering around 30 meters.
The ‘well-preserved’ honey and waffle structures were found on the edge of what the Curiosity team calls Ghost Mountain butte, an area of future exploration for the rover.
O’Connell-Cooper explained on the NASA blog that the ridges are 'about one centimeter, or about 0.39 inches, high', making it one of the most impressive images of this kind for the rover and its team.
The recent discovery by Curiosity and its teams is only one of many in a string of interesting finds recently.
The rover also collects environmental and atmospheric data, which is then used to monitor the levels of argon in the atmosphere, as well as looking for water and chlorine.
On top of this, the rover also collects data about the Martian weather, ultraviolet radiation that strikes the planet’s surface, and much more.
O’Connell-Cooper stated that the rover also captures movies of dust devils on the red planet, as well as the images and data it captures while on its mission.
Kegan Marquez