NASA has shared a major discovery on Mars as its space rover searches for signs of life on the red planet. The Curiosity Mars rover captured a new 360-degree panorama from the red planet, capturing its geological features as it climbed up the Valle Grande valley.
Scientists in charge of the mission said they’ve never seen so many polygon features – closed, flat geometric shapes – in one place on Mars. Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said: “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away.
“We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.”
Curiosity also captured a 360-degree panorama of the strange features on June 19 and 20, but not to the same scale as Wednesday’s discovery.
They could have been produced by cycles of hot and cold temperatures or compression squeezing water out of the sediment when the surface was buried.
Curiosity has so far found sulphur crystals, meteorites, and many other geological features since its mission on Mars began in 2012.
It also discovered that the planet was much wetter than previously thought, and hosted the chemistry and nutrients to support microbial life.
The rover uncovered carbon-based molecules believed to be the precursors to RNA and DNA – the building blocks of life that could have been created by either biological or geological processes.