NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity Traversing Across Gale Crater

As the US space agency NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has created history by completing an entire Martian year (687 days) on the planet, the rover is traversing the Gale crater which was covered with glaciers 3,500 years ago. And it is busy shedding more light on the ancient glaciers.

Once, the Gale craters once had extremely cold, liquid water running through its lower-lying regions, freezing into glaciers and creating landscapes similar to some found today on Earth in Alaska or Iceland, say scientists.

In a new release, one of the researchers Alberto Fairén said: “For example, there is a glacier on Iceland-known as Breiðamerkurjökull-which shows evident resemblances to what we see on Gale crater, and we suppose that is very similar to those which covered Gale’s central mound in the past.”

The study of Gale crater is understood to throw further insights into the whole thing. “As part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) NASA mission, the Curiosity rover can still find evidence of past glacial activity on Gale, and on a very small-scale, for example finding accumulations of angular to sub-angular boulders, striated bedrock and striated boulder pavements and boulder chains,” said the researcher.

The rover continues to move across the red planet capturing data and then sending them back to astronomers at NASA. The scientists further study them to unravel the mystery of space and the universe.

The Curiosity’s findings are of great importance. One of its recent findings actually support the idea of a global ‘cold and wet’ model of the ancient Martian environment. (Image: NASA)