The clever Curiosity rover from NASA has spent more than ten years studying the Gale crater on Mars, but it is far from finished because it has now discovered what might be the most obvious sign of water on the planet!
The US space agency said on Wednesday that Curiosity had discovered rocks with surface ripples similar to those observed on the surface of waves. These ripples were most likely produced by waves on the surface of a shallow lake stirring up material at the lake bottom billions of years ago.
“This is the clearest indication of water and waves we have found throughout the entire mission.
Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stated, “We climbed through hundreds of feet of lake deposits and never saw evidence like this – and now we found it in a spot we thought to be dry.”
“The wet-to-dry process on Mars wasn’t an easy one to understand, as evidenced by the wave ripples, debris flows, and rhythmic layers. Like Earth’s climate today, the ancient environment of Mars was incredibly complex “Vasavada stated.