NASA Curiosity captures strange ‘wind-carved’ Mars landscape in dawn image

NASA's Curiosity rover captured a stunning image of dawn on Mars, illustrating sunlight hitting distant jagged crags with an orange sky and blue sunrise.

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater in 2012 and has been climbing the 3-mile-tall Mount Sharp since 2014, gaining over 1 km in elevation so far.

The striking image was captured by the 6-wheeled rover’s Mastcam camera an hour after the sun dawned upon a landscape showing wind-carved cliffs in the distance.

What makes the image more distinguished is the presence of bright braggy peaks in the distance, also called the Yardang layer. It is located about 10 miles across Mount Sharp’s northwestern reaches and believed to have formed roughly 3 billion years ago from wind-blown sediment, sand or volcanic ash, that hardened and was carved by wind into ridges.

Planetary scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Curiosity project scientist, said, “However, the yardang layer doesn't appear to be part of the continuous stack of layers that make ​up the layer-cake of Mount Sharp.”

“It was added on a little later. It's above what geologists call an unconformity: a gap ​in time where previous layers eroded down before new layers were deposited on top.”

According to Vasvada, the US space agency is hopeful that Curiosity will reach the yardang layer in 2027 or 2028 and explore its geology using the instruments.

Curiosity continues to study Martian geology, climate, and ancient water environments such as lakes and streams to determine if the planet once supported microbial life.