[meteorite-list] Quick Detour by NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Checks Ancient Valley

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4579

Quick Detour by NASA Mars Rover Checks Ancient Valley
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 8, 2015

Fast Facts:

* Rover inspected a site where a valley was cut into bedrock, then refilled.

* A site of that type had not been seen previously on Mars.

Researchers slightly detoured NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the mission's 
planned path in recent days for a closer look at a hillside site where 
an ancient valley had been carved out and refilled.

The rover made observations and measurements there to address questions 
about how the channel formed and filled. Then it resumed driving up Mount 
Sharp, where the mission is studying the rock layers. The layers reveal 
chapters in how environmental conditions and the potential to support 
microbial life changed in Mars' early history.

Two new panoramas of stitched-together telephoto images from Curiosity's 
Mast Camera (Mastcam) present the increasingly hilly region the rover 
has been investigating, and more distant portions of Mount Sharp. These 
large images are online, with pan and zoom controls for exploring them, 
at:

http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/deepzoom/PIA19397

http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/deepzoom/PIA19398

Curiosity has been exploring on Mars since 2012. It reached the base of 
Mount Sharp last year after fruitfully investigating outcrops closer to 
its landing site and then trekking to the mountain. The main mission objective 
now is to examine successively higher layers of Mount Sharp. Curiosity 
spent several months examining the lowest levels of the mountain's basal 
geological unit, the Murray formation, at an outcrop called "Pahrump Hills." 
Then it set off toward a site called "Logan Pass," where the team anticipates 
a first chance to place the contact-science instruments at the end of 
the rover's arm onto a darker geological unit overlying or within the 
Murray formation.

"In pictures we took on the way from Pahrump Hills toward Logan Pass, 
some of the geologists on the team noticed a feature that looked like 
what's called an 'incised valley fill,' which is where a valley has been 
cut into bedrock and then filled in with other sediment," said Curiosity 
Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
Pasadena, California.

This unusual geometry of the rock layers was noted on the side of a rise 
called "Mount Shields," which sits northwest of the planned route to Logan 
Pass. The team chose in late April to divert the rover to the base of 
Mount Shields.

"We wanted to investigate what cut into the mudstone bedrock, and what 
process filled it back in," Vasavada said. "The fill material looks like 
sand. Was the sand transported by wind or by water? What were the relative 
times for when the mudstone formed, when the valley was cut into it, when 
the cut was filled in?

"It's exciting to see this on Mars for the first time," he continued. 
"Features like this on Earth capture evidence of change. What in the environment 
changed to go from depositing one kind of sediment, to eroding it away 
in a valley, to then depositing a different kind of sediment? It's a fascinating 
puzzle that Mars has left for us."

Scientists are examining the evidence collected at Mount Shields as the 
rover approaches its next study area, at Logan Pass.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, 
built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


Media Contact

Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-6278 
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov 

Dwayne Brown 
NASA Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1726 
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

2015-158