Latest news with #AbigailFraeman
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's Mars rover proves these peculiar ridges have secrets to tell
NASA's Curiosity rover has started drilling into a bizarre landscape on Mars that could upend assumptions about when the Red Planet truly dried out. After a long drive, the Mini Cooper-sized robot reached a so-called boxwork region, where a gridlike pattern of ridges splays over six to 12 miles. For years, orbiters had observed this area from space but never up close. Scientists had hypothesized before the rover arrived that the peculiar ridges formed with the last trickles of water in the region before it dried out for good. But mineral veins discovered in the boxwork suggest groundwater stuck around longer than anyone expected. The bedrock between the ridges contains tiny white veins of calcium sulfate, a salty mineral left behind as groundwater seeps into rock cracks. Deposits of the material were plentiful in lower rock layers from an earlier Martian period. But no one thought they'd appear in the layer Curiosity is exploring now, which formed much later. "That's really surprising," said Curiosity's deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman, in a statement. "These calcium sulfate veins used to be everywhere, but they more or less disappeared as we climbed higher up Mount Sharp. The team is excited to figure out why they've returned now." SEE ALSO: Rubin Observatory's first images flaunt millions of galaxies. Take a look. Ancient Mars used to be wetter — flush with rivers, lakes, and maybe even oceans — but over billions of years, it turned into a dusty, cold desert. What's unclear is when that shift happened and how long conditions suitable for life might have lingered. Curiosity's new findings complicate what scientists thought they knew about the timeline. The rover has spent more than a decade in Gale Crater climbing Mount Sharp, reading the rock layers like pages in a planetary chronicle. The layer it's on now is chock-full of magnesium sulfates, salty minerals that typically form as water evaporates. That fits the narrative researchers had expected: This was supposed to be a chapter when Mars was well on its way to arid. That's why a new sample Curiosity drilled this month, dubbed Altadena, could be enlightening. As the rover analyzes the boxwork's composition, scientists may gain a better understanding of how it formed, what minerals are present, and whether any clues about ancient single-celled microorganisms might be hidden there. The rover will drill more ridges in the coming months to compare them and evaluate how groundwater may have changed over time. Bedrock between the boxwork ridges contains tiny white veins of calcium sulfate. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS The mission's next targets lie farther into the boxwork region, where the patterns grow larger and more distinct. Curiosity will keep looking for organic molecules and other potential evidence of a habitable environment in Mars' ancient past. The rover team has begun nicknaming features after places near Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, one of the driest, saltiest places on Earth. It's reminiscent of the Martian landscape Curiosity is sightseeing today. "Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment," said Kirsten Siebach, a rover scientist based in Houston, in an earlier statement. "That makes this an exciting place to explore."
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Close-up images of The Red Planet's ridges from Mars Rover show ‘dramatic evidence' of water
Close-up images of a region of Mars scientists had previously only seen from orbit have revealed 'dramatic evidence' of where water once flowed on the Red Planet. The new images taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover raises fresh questions about how the Martian surface was changing billions of years ago. Mars once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean, NASA said. Scientists aren't sure why the water eventually dried up, leading the planet to transform into the chilly desert it is today. Curiosity's images show evidence of ancient groundwater crisscrossing low ridges, arranged in what geologists call a boxwork pattern, the space agency said. 'By the time Curiosity's current location formed, the long-lived lakes were gone in Gale Crater, the rover's landing area, but water was still percolating under the surface,' NASA said in a news release. 'The rover found dramatic evidence of that groundwater when it encountered crisscrossing low ridges.' 'The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike,' the release continued. 'Eons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within.' The rover has been exploring the planet's Mount Sharp since 2014, where the boxwork patterns have been found. Curiosity essentially 'time travels' as it ascends from the oldest to youngest layers, searching for signs of water and environments that could have supported ancient microbial life, NASA explained. 'A big mystery is why the ridges were hardened into these big patterns and why only here,' Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, said. 'As we drive on, we'll be studying the ridges and mineral cements to make sure our idea of how they formed is on target.' In another clue, scientists observed that the ridges have small fractures filled with the salty mineral calcium sulfate, left behind by groundwater. Curiosity's deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman, said it was a 'really surprising' discovery. 'These calcium sulfate veins used to be everywhere, but they more or less disappeared as we climbed higher up Mount Sharp,' Fraeman said. 'The team is excited to figure out why they've returned now.'
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
First close-up images of Mars ridges show "dramatic evidence" of water
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured the first close-up images of a part of Mars that scientists say provide evidence of how water once flowed on the red planet. There were once rivers, lakes and possibly an ocean on Mars, but they eventually dried up and the planet became the desert it is currently, according to NASA. The new images by Curiosity show "dramatic evidence" of ancient groundwater in crisscrossing low ridges, arranged in "a boxwork pattern," stretching across miles of a mountain on Mars, the space agency said. "The bedrock below these ridges likely formed when groundwater trickling through the rock left behind minerals that accumulated in those cracks and fissures, hardening and becoming cementlike," NASA said in a news release. The ridges look like spiderweb patterns from space and had previously only been observed from orbit, NASA said. "A big mystery is why the ridges were hardened into these big patterns and why only here," Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, said. "As we drive on, we'll be studying the ridges and mineral cements to make sure our idea of how they formed is on target." The ridges have small fractures filled with calcium sulfate, left behind by groundwater, which had not been found before in this part of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall mountain Curiosity is currently climbing, NASA said. "That's really surprising," said Curiosity's deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman. "These calcium sulfate veins used to be everywhere, but they more or less disappeared as we climbed higher up Mount Sharp. The team is excited to figure out why they've returned now." Curiosity landed in the planet's Gale Crater in 2012. It has been climbing the foothills of Mount Sharp since 2014, searching for signs of environments that could have supported life, according to NASA. Former U.S. ambassador to Israel says Israel-Iran ceasefire has good chance of holding Fed Chair Powell says economy is in a solid position despite uncertainty What to know about Trump plans for future Iran negotiations, NATO defense spending agreement
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A NASA rover sent home an immersive Mars panorama. Watch the video.
At first glance, this view may look like a vista from a bluff in the southwestern United States. But those aren't ordinary mountains in the distance. What appears to be a sierra is in fact the rim of an enormous crater on Mars, formed when an asteroid slammed into the Red Planet billions of years ago. The vantage point is from the slopes of the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp, sculpted over time within the crater after the ancient collision. NASA's Curiosity rover captured this extremely wide snapshot as it traversed its extraterrestrial stomping grounds in Gale Crater this February. The agency has since converted that data into a 30-second immersive video, which you can watch further down in this story. It's perhaps the next best thing to actually hiking the chilly desert roughly 140 million miles away in space. "You can imagine the quiet, thin wind," said NASA in a post on X, "or maybe even the waves of a long-gone lake lapping an ancient shore." SEE ALSO: A NASA Mars rover looked up at a moody sky. What it saw wasn't a star. NASA's Curiosity rover snaps a selfie image on lower Mount Sharp in Gale crater in August 2015. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS Since its mission launched in 2011, Curiosity, a Mini Cooper-sized lab on six wheels, has traveled about 352,000,020 miles: some 352 million whizzing through space and another 20 rumbling over Martian terrain. At the time when Curiosity drank up this scenery, it was climbing a region of Mount Sharp known as the sulfate-bearing unit. This area is chock full of salty minerals. Scientists think streams and ponds left them behind as the water dried up billions of years ago. Studying this geology offers clues about how and why Mars may have transformed from a more Earth-like world to the frozen desert it is today. Almost exactly a year ago, the rover accidentally discovered elemental sulfur, its wheels crushing the material to expose a bed of yellow crystals. When pure sulfur is made naturally on Earth, it's usually associated with superheated volcanic gases and hot springs. Another way it can form is through interactions with bacteria — a.k.a. life. "We don't think we're anywhere near a volcano where the rover is," Abigail Fraeman, deputy project scientist on the Curiosity mission, told Mashable in September, "so that is a puzzling feature to find in this particular location." A 30-second video in the above X post showcases the vast Martian panorama. Now Curiosity is on its way to a new destination where it will study an unusual landscape, called a "boxwork." This region likely necessitated warm groundwater to form. And where there's water, there's potential for life — at least the kind scientists know about. Researchers wonder if the boxwork could have hosted ancient single-celled microorganisms. From Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images, the land feature looks like a spiderweb of ridges, spanning several miles. Dark sand fills the hollow spaces among the lattice. Scientists believe this particular boxwork may have formed when minerals in the last trickles of water seeped into surface rock and hardened. As the rocks weathered over the ages, minerals that had cemented into those cracks remained, leaving behind the weird pattern. The rover's science team doesn't expect Curiosity to reach its destination until at least late fall, said Catherine O'Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, in the mission log. "Our drives are long right now," O'Connell-Cooper wrote, "but we are still taking the time to document all of the wonderful geology as we go, and not just speeding past all of the cool things!"
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's rovers just found similar gnarly rocks on opposite sides of Mars
Aliens aren't terraforming Mars, but one of NASA's rovers just found something with a strange texture that might entice a cauliflower lover to do a double-take. Curiosity, a Mini Cooper-sized lab on wheels, was ambling over rugged terrain a few days ago this March when its navigation camera spotted some Martian rocks unlike any others. The scientists leading the rover's expedition say they've never seen anything quite like this on the Red Planet. "Oh my glob," the anthropomorphic Curiosity account posted on X. "What are these lumpy rocks?" But Curiosity wasn't the only one with a geological mystery. At the same time, roughly 2,300 miles away on the other side of the planet, Perseverance found bumpy rocks of a different kind, calling to mind the famous "Martian blueberries" discovered by the Opportunity rover in 2004. SEE ALSO: Scientists found huge beaches on Mars likely from a long gone ocean Curiosity took close-up pictures of a strange bumpy rock it discovered on Mars in March. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS Since its mission launched in 2011, Curiosity has traveled about 352,000,020 miles: some 352 million whizzing through space and another 20 over the rusty-dusty terrain. Right now it's on its way to an unexplored part of Gale Crater, called a "boxwork" region, which likely necessitated warm groundwater to form eons ago. Often outshined by its younger twin rover Perseverance, Curiosity stole back the limelight earlier this week for a monumental discovery based on one of its rock samples. Within it, researchers detected the largest organic molecules yet on Mars, suggesting the chemistry needed for life may have progressed further on the Red Planet than once thought. The molecules, which contain long chains of carbon atoms, could be pieces of fatty acids, key ingredients for Earth life. Though the organic molecule find, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, isn't proof of life, it does encourage scientists that other more complex molecules linked to life could still be on Mars. Previously, researchers have been skeptical over whether such evidence could remain on the planet after millions of years of radiation and environmental changes. Suffice to say, Curiosity is not to be underestimated in its scientific value. The team gave Curiosity's new rocks official names — Manzana Creek and Palo Comado — and took pictures for the record. The leftward rock in the image at the top of this story has jagged, vertical surfaces and "a lot of crazy rough texture," according to the mission journal. Perseverance discovered a bumpy rock on the rim of the Jezero Crater in March. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / IRAP "The rocks were shaped by a combination of wind and water over time, resulting in the cool textures we see today," Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity's deputy project scientist, told Mashable. Perseverance's bumpy rock, on the other hand, looks a little more like a cluster of miniature peas than cauliflower. It's covered in millimeter-scale beads, some pierced with tiny pinholes. The rover found the rock, officially dubbed St. Pauls Bay, around the rim of Jezero Crater. And it seems both rovers' sightings have flummoxed their humans. "What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes?" wrote Alex Jones, a researcher working on the Mars 2020 mission team, in a blog post. A Martian rock, dubbed St. Pauls Bay, stands out in gray in a field of reddish-brown terrain. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU Spherical features can form on rocks when water flows through them, creating concretions of minerals over time. But they can also form in other ways, like in volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes. When droplets of molten rock are thrown into the air by volcanoes or impacts, they cool as they travel, hardening in little balls. Scientists will continue studying the rocks using the tools available to them on the rovers, but such finds reinforce the desire for NASA to bring samples back to Earth for more rigorous studies. Right now the space agency is trying to figure out how to save its Mars Sample Return mission, the plan to fly home bits of rock, dust, and air collected by Perseverance. NASA will spend the next year working on engineering plans for two potential new approaches that are considered less complicated and expensive.
