NASA rover captures striking dawn image on Mars

NASA has released a striking image of dawn on the Martian surface taken by its Curiosity rover, showing sunlight bathing jagged crags formed billions of years ago as the car-sized vehicle continues to explore Earth's planetary neighbor.

Curiosity landed in 2012 in Gale Crater near the Martian equator, and since 2014 has been climbing Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-km-tall) mountain rising from the crater floor. The image was taken by the six-wheeled rover's Mastcam camera about an hour after the sun rose above a landscape featuring wind-carved cliffs in the distance.

"The bright craggy peaks in the distance are a rock layer that is quite different in appearance from all the layers the rover has driven through so far. We think it once was wind-blown sediment, maybe sand or maybe even ash that blew into the crater from nearby volcanic activity. After the sediment hardened into rock, eons of wind carved up the rock layer into ridges called yardangs," said planetary scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Curiosity project scientist.

The yardang layer most likely formed about 3 billion years ago, around the same time as the rest of the mountain, according to Vasavada. This layer spans about 10 miles (16 kilometers) across the northwestern reaches of Mount Sharp.

"However, the yardang layer doesn't appear to be part of the continuous stack of layers that make up the layer-cake of Mount Sharp. It was added on a little later. It's above what geologists call an unconformity: a gap in time where previous layers eroded down before new layers were deposited on top," Vasavada said.

The rover on its gradual ascent up the mountain has gained upwards of 0.6 miles (1 km) in elevation, the most ever climbed on Mars, according to NASA.

Mount Sharp is built of layers, each recording a period of the planet's geological past. In studying these layers, scientists have learned more about bodies of water — lakes and streams — that long ago covered this region, at a time when Mars was wetter and warmer than the cold and desolate place it is today.

Vasavada said NASA hopes Curiosity will reach the yardang layer in 2027 or 2028, at which time it will use its instruments to scrutinize the geology there.

Curiosity has been studying the geology and climate of Mars and examining whether it once bore conditions conducive to harboring microbial life. It is one of two NASA rovers operating on Mars. The Perseverance rover is currently traversing the margins of Jezero Crater in the northern hemisphere.

Curiosity's new image of Martian dawn is certainly otherworldly.

"This scene has a wildness that reminds me of a road trip through Monument Valley, Arizona. You can almost feel the silence and the endless open space under the sky. But as familiar as that sounds, the sky is orange and the sunrise has shades of blue. It's like Earth, but it's definitely Mars," Vasavada said.

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-Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien/Reuters