- 4219 -
CURIOSITY - robot exploring Mars? Curiosity has been traversing its
planetary subject since 2012. Curiosity
is now headed to find a path above the ridge to learn about the watery history
of Mount Sharp on the planet Mars.
--------------------- 4219 - CURIOSITY - robot exploring Mars?
- Robots are scary
things, especially in the movies. How
about us controlling them while they roam another planet? “Curiosity”
is the name of a robot that is now exploring Mars. This robot “rover” just reached the perilous
ridge on Red Planet after 3 failed attempts'
-
- On Monday,
September 18, 2023, NASA confirmed that, after three failed attempts, its
Curiosity Mars rover managed to reach a precarious destination on the Red
Planet called “The Gediz Vallis Ridge”.
-
- As to why this formation was worth such turmoil for Curiosity? Scientists believe that three billion years ago, when Mars was much wetter than the arid
land it is now, powerful debris flows carried mud and boulders down the side of a mountain in the vicinity known as Mount Sharp. This debris spread into a fan that was later eroded by wind into a towering ridge.
-
- This ridge holds
proof of Mars' blue past and maybe more excitingly, information about the
planet's ancient, dangerous landslides.
Witnessing these events would see huge rocks ripped out of the mountain
high above, rushed downhill, and spread out into a fan below.
-
- The target was
reached on August 14, on the 3,923rd Martian day (sol), of the mission. Curiosity's Mastcam took 136 individual
images of the site that were stitched together to form a 360-degree panorama
that was later color-enhanced for visual purposes.
-
- To get to the
Gediz Vallis Ridge, Curiosity had to get past quite a few hurdles. First, the rover had some trouble
accessing this long-sought region on the Red Planet after scaling a spot in
2021 known as the Greenheugh Pediment, a tremendously difficult-to-climb rock
formation.
-
- Then, last year,
Curiosity ran into some knife-edged "gator-back" rocks stippled along
another possible path to the ridge. The moniker "gator-back" comes
from the fact these rocks resemble scales on an alligator's back. They're
believed to be made of sandstone which also made them the hardest type of rock
Curiosity had run into on Mars.
-
- And earlier this
year, Curiosity faced another setback on the way to Gediz Vallis after checking
out the Marker Band Valley. Getting out of Marker Band was comparable to
partaking in a Martian "slip-and-slide." That whole ordeal left
Curiosity in delicate shape.
-
- The Curiosity team
called GV Ridge "the 'Bermuda Triangle' of Mt. Sharp". Google on line to see panoramic view of the
surface of Mars from the top of a ridge, littered with rocks and hills.
-
- These Gediz Vallis
Ridge formations preserve a record of one of the last wet periods seen on this
part of Mars. After three years, they finally found a spot where Mars allowed
Curiosity to safely access the steep ridge.
-
- To the latter
point, Curiosity was never meant to make the climb towards Mount Sharp's peak,
which means dissecting rocks on the ground that once stood at the formation's
apex is a uniquely important opportunity.
-
- The rover has been
exploring the 3-mile-tall mountain since 2014, stumbling upon evidence of
ancient streams and such along the way.
Curiosity spent 11 days at the ridge after its mid-August arrival.
During this time, it photographed dark rocks in the region that "clearly
originated elsewhere on the mountain," as well as others lower on the
ridgeline, "some as large as cars." These shards are expected to have
come from higher places on Mount Sharp.
-
- Curiosity's
Mastcam captured 136 images of the Gediz Vallis Ridge that were pieced together
in a mosaic to form the 360-degree view.
The rover offered scientists the first-ever up-close views of a geologic
creature called a "debris flow fan," which refers to a phenomenon
where debris flowing down a slope spreads out into a fan shape.
-
-
November 13, 2023
CURIOSITY -
robot exploring Mars? 4215
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