Mysterious honeycomb pattern on Mars puzzles NASA scientists
A deeper look reveals an odd pattern What made the Honeycomb structure? The dark rocks bring another dimension of mystery Why this discovery matters Space
A deeper look reveals an odd pattern What made the Honeycomb structure? The dark rocks bring another dimension of mystery Why this discovery matters Space and its mysterious world never fail to surprise humans. According to the latest report, 14 years after touching down on the Red Planet, NASA’s Curiosity rover has snapped a photo of a mysterious honeycomb-like texture on the Martian surface, lending yet another mystery to an ever-expanding list of Martian geological features.NASA's veteran Curiosity rover found a curious geological formation on Mars that has left scientists puzzled to understand its context. During its latest exploration inside Gale Crater, the rover photographed a striking honeycomb-like pattern etched into the planet’s surface—a discovery that researchers say was as surprising on the ground as it was from orbit.According to NASA's blog, the rover team was surprised to see the unit covered with polygonal structures resembling the top of a giant Martian honeycomb. Driving further into the unit, the polygonal ridges were more eroded.
Littered about this unit are pebble to cobble-sized dark-toned rocks.A still-to-be-resolved question is whether these are bits of Mars that “floated” down from higher in the stratigraphy, were ejected from distant impacts outside of Gale crater, or are meteorites from beyond Mars altogether, the blog states.Mission scientists said they were surprised by what they saw when they compared the close-up images to earlier orbital data.Scientists do not yet have a clear explanation for how the unusual formation came about. For the uninitiated, Mars has billions of years of eruptions, flowing water, shifting sediments, wind erosion and dramatic climate change. Any or all of these processes may have played a role in the formation of the polygonal structures.Similar geometric patterns can be formed on Earth through drying and cracking mud, crystallizing minerals, or the repeated freezing and thawing of the ground. It is not clear whether the Martian feature formed through similar geological processes – or something else entirely.Studying how the structure formed might give important clues about the environmental conditions that existed on the Red Planet.It was not only the honeycombed terrain that drew the attention of the researchers.After driving further towards the upper boundary of the light-toned, polygon-covered unit, the three-sol Friday plan included APXS and MAHLI measurements of another polygon ridge and one of the dark-toned cobbles, “Cortadera.” ChemCam LIBS also targeted “Cortadera” and a polygon ridge.
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