I began my journalism career with Entrepreneur magazine with a focus on small business technology. As a freelance journalist, I’ve covered gadgets, geek culture, public schools, weird foods, transatlantic travel and Route 66.
Mars is a dry and dusty planet these days, but it wasn’t always like that. NASA’s Mars rovers are getting an up close and personal look at the red planet’s enigmatic history of water. You can drop yourself right into the middle of this mystery with a dramatic 360-degree panorama from NASA’s Curiosity Rover. The view shows the intriguing Gediz Vallis channel, which may have once been home to a river.
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a 360-degree image on YouTube on March 29 that allows you to move around within the view. Annotations point out landmarks like the Gale Crater rim, nearby buttes and the debris pile that fills the Gediz Vallis channel. The channel is a highlight of the panorama. “From space, it looks like a river channel. That’s what attracted scientists’ attention initially,” says NASA JPL spokesperson Andrew Good over email.
Scientists are working to understand when liquid water vanished from the surface of Mars. Curiosity’s study of Gediz Vallis could add valuable data to that discussion. “The rover team is searching for evidence that would confirm how the channel was carved into the underlying bedrock,”in a statement. “The formation’s sides are steep enough that the team doesn’t think the channel was made by wind.
Curiosity’s continued explorations could help settle the question of how Gediz Vallis formed. It may also change our understanding of the Gale Crater. “If the channel or the debris pile were formed by liquid water, that’s really interesting,” said Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA JPL. “It would mean that fairly late in the story of Mount Sharp—after a long dry period—water came back, and in a big way.
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