NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been traversing the red planet for over twelve years now, and has made some fascinating discoveries in that time.

From telling us more about Mars’s weather and atmosphere, to confirming that the planet has the possibility of once supporting life, NASA’s project has been an undeniable success.

And it isn’t stopping there. With an estimation of a twenty year life span, we can expect new insights into our neighbouring planet until at least into the early 2030s.

According to a recent statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the rover is currently headed on a new mission, one that it will take it months to reach and complete. Soon, the rover will be leaving behind the Gediz Vallis channel, where it has been exploring for the last year.

Curiosity’s time at the Gediz Vallis channel was highly interesting to astronomers and casual space enthusiasts alike. It was here that the rover discovered evidence of sulfur, whilst traversing Mars’s mysterious mountainous regions. The rover provided 360-degree panoramic images which helped researchers to understand the terrain – including areas in which lakes and rivers once flowed.

But perhaps the most interesting thing that it discovered at the channel was a field of light-colored terrain. When the rover reached it and analyzed the rocks, this was determined as a field of rocks comprising of pure sulfur: when the rover crushed one of the rocks, it found yellow sulfuric crystals inside.

Giving us greater insight into the climate and geology of our neighboring planet, this also generated even more questions, as Ashwin Vasavada from NASA’s JPL explained in a statement:

“We looked at the sulfur field from every angle — from the top and the side — and looked for anything mixed with the sulfur that might give us clues as to how it formed. We’ve gathered a ton of data, and now we have a fun puzzle to solve.”

But as it heads on its next journey, it is hoped that the Curiosity Rover will unlock the answers to one of Mars’s greatest mysteries.

And next up on the itinerary is the exploration of a formation on the surface of Mars known as ‘the boxwork’.

This little-known phenomenon comprises of a series of web-like patterns that stretch over Mars’s terrain for miles, puzzling researchers whose only information on the formations thus far is garnered from telescopes.

Right now, the only explanation that the team at NASA have is that the patterns formed as a result of Mars’s water processes in the distant past, as they explain in the statement:

“It’s believed to have formed when minerals carried by Mount Sharp’s last pulses of water settled into fractures in surface rock and then hardened. As portions of the rock eroded away, what remained were the minerals that had cemented themselves in the fractures, leaving the weblike boxwork.”

But it will take confirmation from the Curiosity Rover before these theories can be fully confirmed.

The researchers to have some level of precedent to their  understanding of this boxwork, though.

That’s because similar formations occur on Earth. Here, these patterns tend to form beside our own bodies of water, usually on cliffsides and in caves. The formations happen as a result of the water processes happening on the structures’ rocky surfaces.

However, on Mars things are a little different. At Mount Sharp, the patterns are as vast as they are unusual. Not only do they cover an area of between 10 and 20 kilometers on Mars’s surface, the team’s hypothesis suggests that they formed as water was leaving Mars’s surface. This is different to on Earth, where they form as rocks are eroded by the constant presence and movement of water.

And this is fascinating for more reasons than one, as Kirsten Siebach from Rice University in Houston explains:

“These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through. Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore.”

As the rover heads towards the boxwork, we can be sure that more intriguing updates from our red neighbor will follow soon.

Perhaps this will be the newest sign of life on Mars.

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