NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover just made a strange discovery. The vehicle stumbled upon honeycomb-like patterns of polygons on the surface of the Martian valley known as \u201cValle Grande\u201d last month, according to The Independent.<\/p>\n
The Curiosity rover has been exploring the Red Planet for nearly 12 years.<\/p>\n
While this is not the first time the mission has seen the polygonal shapes, scientists have never seen so many of the features in one place before. They also still do not know how they formed – though they hope to determine the cause.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity\u2019s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,\u201d Curiosity mission project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of the agency\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in South California, said in a statement. \u201cWe measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The polygons are between 1.3-3 inches in diameter and wrap around the sides of a nearby hill nicknamed \u201cMiraflores.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the polygons spotted in the past were clearly formed as cracks in ancient mud.<\/p>\n
Researchers previously said these were signals of the Red Planet\u2019s past seasonal cycles – and potential signs for how life began there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first tangible evidence we\u2019ve seen that the ancient climate of Mars had such regular, Earth-like wet-dry cycles,\u201d William Rapin, of France\u2019s Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plan\u00e9tologie, said in a statement in 2023. \u201cBut even more important is that wet-dry cycles are helpful \u2013 maybe even required \u2013 for the molecular evolution that could lead to life.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, a variety of processes can contribute to honeycomb textures, according to the laboratory. Another potential explanation is that water was squeezed out of the sediment when the surface was buried.<\/p>\n
This is not the first discovery from Curiosity that\u2019s surprised project mission researchers.<\/p>\n
Curiosity has found evidence that ancient Mars was able to support microbial life, but it\u2019s also found sulfur crystals and shiny meteorites.<\/p>\n
The rover landed on Mars in August 2012. Since 2014, it\u2019s been climbing the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp, which was covered with lakes and streams billions of years ago.<\/p>\n
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