Fourth time’s the charm for NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover

Scientists believe that three billion years ago, when Mars was much wetter than the arid land it is now, powerful debris flows carried mud and boulders down the side of a mountain in the vicinity known as Mount Sharp. According to NASA, this debris "spread into a fan that was later eroded by wind into a towering ridge." In practical terms, that backstory means this ridge holds proof of Mars' blue past — and maybe more excitingly, information about the planet's ancient, dangerous landslides.

The target was reached on August 14,2023, or on the 3,923rd Martian day of the mission. After settling in, Curiosity's Mastcam took 136 individual images of the site that were stitched together to form a 360-degree panorama that was later color-enhanced for visual purposes.

To get to the Gediz Vallis Ridge, Curiosity had to get past quite a few hurdles. First, the rover had some trouble accessing this long-sought region on the Red Planet after scaling a spot in 2021 known as the Greenheugh Pediment, which scientists say was a tremendously difficult-to-climb rock formation.

Last year, Curiosity ran into some knife-edged "gator-back" rocks stippled along another possible path to the ridge. The moniker "gator-back" comes from the fact these rocks resemble scales on an alligator's back. They're believed to be made of sandstone — which also made them the hardest type of rock Curiosity had run into on Mars.

Earlier this year, Curiosity faced another setback on the way to Gediz Vallis after checking out the Marker Band Valley. Getting out of Marker Band, NASA said at the time, was comparable to partaking in a Martian "slip-and-slide." That whole ordeal left Curiosity in delicate shape.

The rover has been exploring the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain since 2014, stumbling upon evidence of ancient streams and such along the way, NASA explained, but Gediz Vallis ridge was a whole new area to investigate — and, in fact, the youngest section of the region. With Gediz Vallis under its belt at last, Curiosity is headed to find a path above the ridge to learn about the watery history of Mount Sharp.

Edited by : www.linkedin.com/in/priyanka-v23

Credits : https://www.space.com/nasa-curiosity-rover-mars-gediz-vallis-ridge