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NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures ‘Well-Preserved’ Honey and Waffle Patterns on the Martian Planet

The patches were earlier noticed by astronomers in Mars but they are baffled this time as the fractures are preserved very well.

BY SOMDATTA MAITY

PUBLISHED 3 DAYS AGO

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of its current workspace, containing well-preserved polygonal-shaped fractures (Cover Image Source: NASA)

For the last 13 years, the Curiosity Rover has shared a lot of data regarding the Red Planet. Despite the passage of a decade, something new continues to catch the eye of astronomers. This time, it is some 'waffles' on Mars' surface, stated LADBible.

True color image of Mars taken by the OSIRIS instrument on the ESA (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons | Photo by ESA & MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

Curiosity Rover, through its Front Hazard Avoidance Camera, captured some photographs of Mars at the beginning of May. The area photographed by the Curiosity rover features 'rough' and 'gnarly' material, as per Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick. Experts concluded that some of these features were exceptionally well-preserved, polygonal-shaped fractures. These fractures were similar in appearance to 'patchwork of honeycombs' or 'patch of waffles,' according to Cooper.

As per experts, the photographed region was initially deemed to be very difficult to access by contact science instruments like APXS, according to NASA. However, the 'patchwork' with the right precision could be reached by the Rover equipment. Researchers determined that the fractures were around 1 centimeter, or about 0.39 inches, in height. The 'patchwork' has been noted by astronomers before on Mars, but they have never been this well preserved. The waffles have been estimated to be spread across a distance of 66 to 98 feet. It supposedly extends until the edge of 'Ghost Mountain' fractures.

Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover (Image Source: YouTube | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Cooper is interested in getting the APXS instrument in the rover close to one of the ridges associated with the fractures. She believes the gathered data in the scenario will give experts an idea about the fracture's composition. The Rover team has honed in on a pair of targets in these fractures. The rover will be at the site for a week, and the team is hopeful that their analysis will be completed within that duration.

The Rover team will use 'Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy' for the analysis, according to the Daily Mail. In this process, a laser pulse would be fired at the sample, which would lead to a small burst of plasma. The light emitted in this process will help researchers in determining what chemicals are present in the ridges.

Past studies have indicated that such fractures were formed on Mars 3.6 to 3.8 million years ago. During this period, the planet underwent several wet-dry cycles. The cycles created features similar to those found in a drying lake bed on Earth. Those features have survived to date, and appear like fractures. Though the formation of this process has been reviewed by several experts, nobody has ever been able to pinpoint the exact circumstances.

There are a multitude of speculations; they could have been formed when Mars started to get drier, or could have been facilitated when the groundwater started to move within the bedrock. Researchers are hopeful that analysis of the newfound polygonal-shaped fractures would aid them in getting a proper understanding of that past phenomenon. Moreover, since the phenomenon has been speculated to have links to Mars' once possible wet past, it could also aid experts in solving their biggest Red Planet query: whether it once had life?