REAL LIFE NEWS: CURIOSITY SENDS PICTURES OF LAYERED ROCK FORMATIONS
by Hazed
NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent back some stunning pictures showing layered rock formations on Mars, revealing much about its geological past.
Curiosity has been exploring a region of lower Mount Sharp known as the Murray Buttes. It used its Mast Camera to take a series of images last week – you can see one of them at the source link below.
The buttes are eroded remnants of ancient sandstone, and Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada explained, “Studying these buttes up close has given us a better understanding of ancient sand dunes that formed and were buried, chemically changed by groundwater, exhumed and eroded to form the landscape that we see today.”
The rover has spent 2 months driving around the buttes, and now it has left them to move higher up Mount Sharp. Here it will investigate how and when the habitable ancient conditions found on its earlier explorations evolved into the drier and less life-favourable conditions on the mount.