![\"Cracked](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5280875.webp\")
<\/p>\nSCIENCE<\/p>\n
Posisbly cracked mud, therefore more evidence Red Planet was once less horrible<\/p>\n
NASA has shared new snaps captured by its Curiosity rover that show a large \u201cfield of honeycomb textures\u201d on Mars.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the best of the images Curiosity captured. It shows the honeycomb field, each element of which is four to eight centimeters across.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n A close-up of the polygon fractures discovered by NASA\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover highlights their honeycomb-like textures
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS\n <\/p>\n
NASA doesn\u2019t know how the honeycomb formed, but The Register is willing to rule out space bees because Curiosity has seen this sort of thing before and scientists are pretty sure the patterns are the result of mud drying and cracking during some unknowably distant Martian event.<\/p>\n
Curiosity spotted the polygonal features after starting its climb up a Martian valley that mission scientists have nicknamed \u201cValle Grande.\u201d NASA\u2019s post<\/a> about the find says the rover has seen \u201csmall patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande.\u201d<\/p>\n The Rover snapped the honeycomb field on June 19 and 20, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days of its very extended mission. Curiosity reached Martian soil on August 5, 2012, and was the first probe to land under a \u201csky crane\u201d \u2013 a hovering craft that lowers rovers to the ground. Previous Mars landings relied on bouncing airbags that space agencies hoped would protect probes as they landed at speeds exceeding 70 km\/h.<\/p>\n Curiosity has travelled about 35 kilometers since arriving on Mars and has made myriad fascinating observations along the way, some of which suggest Mars was once home to intermittent oases<\/a> or even a large lake<\/a>. The journey was hard, with damaged tires a persistent problem. The rover\u2019s drill got stuck in a Martian rock<\/a>. NASA took a leaf from the Taylor Swift playbook and found a way to shake it off. The space agency has also remotely reprogrammed the rover<\/a> to conduct different experiments and uploaded major software upgrades<\/a> to keep it rolling.<\/p>\n \n Field of Martian Polygons discovered by\u00a0NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover The rover is currently carrying out its fifth extended mission. NASA typically extends missions for as long as its robots gather enough data to justify the cost of operating them. Curiosity continues to meet those criteria very comfortably! \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCIENCE Posisbly cracked mud, therefore more evidence Red Planet was once less horrible NASA has shared new snaps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,82],"class_list":["post-574885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Field](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5280877.webp\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS\n <\/p>\n