Having already gazed longingly upon them from afar, NASA’s Curiosity rover has traveled to the nearly two-story sand dunes located on the lower portion of Mount Sharp, where it will begin an up-close investigation of the feature, the US space agency has confirmed.
The images captured by the rover provide “the first detailed look at the Martian dunes for further study,” according to Engadget, and the plan is for Curiosity to obtain samples of materials found in the dunes for further analysis using its built-in laboratory instruments, NASA added.
The photographs captured by the rover depict the rippled surface of the feature informally called “High Dune,” which is part of the larger “Bagnold Dunes” on the northwest part of Mount Sharp, as well as a wheel track exposing material beneath the surface of nearby sand sheets.
Curiosity captured those images using its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on November 27, and during its stay at the dunes, it will determine exactly how much the area has changed over time. NASA has already conducted observations from orbit showing that the edges of individual dunes move as much as three feet (one meter) per Earth year.
Current project part of an ongoing investigation of Mount Sharp
Curiosity, which arrived on Mars in August 2012, traveled to the base of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater after investigating outcroppings near the rover’s landing site. It arrived at the mountain in 2014 and its current primary mission is to examine successively higher layers of crater’s central peak.
According to the Daily Mail, Mount Sharp stands roughly three miles (five kilometers) tall. The rover is currently investigating its lowest sedimentary layers, many of which have been exposed and are evidence of the repeated filling and evaporation of a sizable body of water on Mars.
One of the goals of NASA’s ongoing Mars Science Laboratory Project is to use the rover to look at ancient and potentially habitable environments, and to determine how the landscape of the Red Planet changed over the course of several million years, the UK news outlet added. The research part the agency’s ongoing attempts to sent a manned mission to Mars before 2040.
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Pictured is a close-up of the Martian sand. Image credit: NASA JPL
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