Washington, United States

Advertisment

NASA's Curiosity rover is currently in the twelfth year of its mission to investigate Mars. Till now, it has reached several places where no other rover has gone before. 

Recently, the Curiosity rover's adventures brought it to Gediz Vallis. a winding and boulder-choked channel some scientists believe is the desiccated bed of an ancient river. They will try to investigate more about its past and find out how the landform came to be in the first place. 

The Curiosity rover was originally slated for a two-year mission. However, it continues to trawl the Martian surface. It has provided several new insights about the red planet and its environment. The rover's findings have led scientists to believe that life might have once lived or still lives on Mars. Since 2014, the rover has been driving up the slopes of Mount Sharp, which towers 3 miles (5 kilometres) above the rover's initial landing location in Gale Crater.

Advertisment

Mount Sharp and the rest of Mars would've been significantly wetter billions of years ago than it is today. However, Mars has dried up over time and the wind and remnant water has eroded the mountain into the layers Curiosity can see today.

ALSO READ | Travelling 650 million light-years, a mysterious signal possibly from a star corpse has reached Earth

According to scientists, some force carved the Gediz Vallis channel on the mountain's slope as it was in the process of drying up. 

Advertisment

Although it's possible that wind created Gediz Vallis, the channel's sides are steeper than scientists would expect from a wind-carved vale. There's a high chance that the channel spotted by Curiosity on Gediz Vallis' floor was formed by landslides from higher up the mountain, which could have deposited boulders and other rocky debris. Another intriguing prospect is that it was formed by the flow of liquid water.

"If the channel or the debris pile were formed by liquid water, that's interesting. It would mean that fairly late in the story of Mount Sharp, after a long dry period water came back, and in a big way," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.

The Curiosity rover will spend several months exploring the channel, not just to study the Martian history but also to learn more about what lies beyond. As it is unable to climb Mount Sharp, the best way for the rover to investigate the area is by looking up from the channel, allowing scientists to gain insights into what lies ahead.

(With inputs from agencies)