Gloria Holmes
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring our neighboring planet Mars since 2012. To be more precise, Curiosity is exploring Gale Crater, which is ideally located between the northern flatlands of the red planet and the southern hemisphere’s crater landscape. Gale Crater is an ancient crater, about 154 kilometers in diameter, and probably formed more than 3.5 billion years ago. In the middle rises Mount Aeolis Mons, a mountain about five kilometers in height.
NASA scientists have chosen the landing site for Curiosity carefully: satellite images indicate that Gale crater was once filled with water. A dry lake on Mars looked promising: perhaps one could come across traces of life that once existed there. Liquid water is essential in finding it. But now my research team has published in The journal Science Advances published a studyWho claims: Gale Crater may not have been filled with a huge deep lake – but at most a shallow pool.
Instead of water, the wind is said to have created deposits in Gale Crater on Mars
The conclusion of the group led by Jiacheng Liu of the University of Hong Kong is based on the fact that most of the findings and investigations conducted by the Curiosity spacecraft since its landing can also be interpreted differently. In 2012, Curiosity landed in the northeastern part of Gale Crater, and has been exploring the sides of Aeolis Mons since 2014. The rover is decomposing sediments and sediments. Mudstone layers in particular have been evaluated by other researchers as remnants of a pre-existing lake, as these indicate interactions between rocks and water. Over time, the same mudstone deposited in the lake in the form of sediments.
