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Curiosity Blog, Sols 4859-4866: One Small Crater and Thousands of Polygons

Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Curiosity spent the past week driving towards a small crater, about 10 meters (32 feet) in diameter. Today the team informally named this crater “Antofagasta,” after a region and major city in Chile next to the Atacama. Craters are very cool for many reasons, one of which is that they act as “nature’s drill,” exposing material to the surface through their walls and ejecta that would have otherwise been buried. From orbit, Antofagasta looks like it might be a relatively young crater (less than 50 million years old, which is young on a Martian geologic scale!), so there may be material in and around the crater that was only exposed to the harsh, organic-molecule destroying radiation environment on Mars’ surface in the very recent past. Curiosity has already found many hardy organic molecules that survived billions of years, but could there be an even bigger treasure trove of complex chemistry deep below the surface? Antofagasta could help us answer this question… but only if the crater is big enough to have excavated deep rocks, if it really is relatively young, and if we are able to find a rock we are confident was excavated from depth that also meets the physical requirements for Curiosity’s drill. That’s a lot of “ifs,” but also too exciting of an opportunity to drive by! We’ll be able to answer all these “ifs" and decide what to do once we get a much closer look at the crater from the ground next week.

NASA's Mars Rover Comes Across Formation That Looks Like the Scales of a Massive Cosmic Reptile

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Far away on the surface of Mars, NASA’s Curiosity Rover took a side quest this weekend and captured images of a mysterious roadside attraction: a rocky surface that resembles the scales of a cosmically large reptile that has scientists stumped on its origin.

Kevin M. Gill, engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, posted the images showing this distinctive polygonal rock surface from the vantage point of the trusty rover that’s been exploring the Red Planet since 2012; the rover was on its way to investigate a small crater when it happened upon the intriguing landscape feature.

NASA Begins Implementation for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Mission to Mars

The NASA Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project, under the agency’s Mars Exploration Program, provides specific hardware and services to the European Space Agency in support of their Rosalind Franklin Mission to Mars, including a launch vehicle for the mission, the propulsion system for the rover’s lander platform, radioisotope heater units for the rover’s internal systems, and portions of the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer scientific instrument.

NASA has given approval for the agency’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project to begin implementation, underscoring the agency’s continued partnership with ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosalind Franklin mission. The mission is led by ESA and that agency is responsible for providing the spacecraft, including the carrier module, the landing platform, as well as the rover and surface operations.

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