PIA26552: Curiosity on the Road to Boxwork Formations
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
 Spacecraft:  Curiosity
 Instrument:  Mastcam
 Product Size:  39948 x 4084 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Malin Space Science Systems
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA26552.tif (410 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA26552.jpg (33.77 MB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

click here for Figure A for PIA26552
Figure A

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this panorama in morning light on March 9, 2025, the 4,476th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Steep hills on the left side of the panorama enclose wind-carved valleys on Mount Sharp, the mountain that Curiosity has been climbing for over a decade. Broken-up, rounded rocks throughout the foreground are part of the mountain's sulfate-bearing unit.

The butte in the distance at right is nicknamed "Gould Mesa." A band of cliffs and dark ridges near the top of the butte may be the first glimpses of boxwork formations, a kind of feature created by groundwater flowing through large bedrock fractures in the ancient past. Assuming that is how they formed, these could represent the last gasps of water found on this region of Mars before the planet dried out completely.

Before now, these features had only been viewed from orbiting spacecraft, to which they appeared as spiderweb-like fractures. This pattern of fractures stretches as long as 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers) across the side of Mount Sharp. The rover's team expects to study these formations up close throughout the rest of 2025.

Figure A is a cropped version of the scene centered on dark ridges and a cliff band on Gould Mesa. These features may be related to the processes that created the boxwork formations elsewhere in the sulfate-bearing unit.

The color in these images has been adjusted to match lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.

Curiosity was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.

For more about Curiosity, visit:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Image Addition Date:
2025-04-24