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NASA’s Curiosity rover finds a mysterious honeycomb landscape on Mars (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 15 hours ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has entered a Martian valley covered by an astonishing “sea” of tiny polygon-shaped fractures. The honeycomb patterns, each only a few inches wide, stretch across the landscape and even wrap around a nearby 20-foot-tall butte.

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[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 31 points 13 hours ago

Columnar basalt! That means flowing lava at one point on Mars!

[-] tb_@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

That's a conclusion the article doesn't leap to:

What Created the Honeycomb Patterns?

Some polygonal formations previously examined by Curiosity clearly began as cracks in drying mud. However, several different processes can produce this kind of honeycomb appearance.

Repeated warming and cooling can fracture the ground into geometric shapes. Compression may also create similar patterns by forcing water out of sediment after the material becomes buried beneath the surface.

Scientists are now studying the newly discovered formations to determine which of these processes, or possibly a combination of them, shaped the landscape in Valle Grande.

[-] justlemmyin@lemmy.world 11 points 11 hours ago

Boooo! I was going with my Aliens on Mars theory and you ruined it.

[-] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 1 points 7 hours ago

The image doesn’t really look like columnar basalt, but I could be wrong.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago

Does that mean this mountain could be a volcano?

Billions of years ago, lakes and streams were scattered across the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been climbing since 2014.

Also has this rover been climbing the same mountain for 12 years? How close is it to the top?

[-] tb_@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

The rover's speed is measured in meters per day I'm pretty sure, it goes at a very slow pace.

Edit: yes. Given tests I imagine it frequently travels a lot less than that.

Based on variables including power levels, terrain difficulty, slippage and visibility, the maximum terrain-traverse speed is estimated to be 200 m (660 ft) per day by automatic navigation.

Further edit: NASA has an interactive map of its journey so far, neat.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/