NASA Mars rover Curiosity finds key evidence for lake at landing site

This NASA handout photo shows beds of sandstone inclined to the southwest toward Mount Sharp and away from the Gale Crater rim on Mars. The inclination of the beds indicates build-out of sediment toward Mount Sharp. These inclined beds are interpreted as the deposits of small deltas fed by rivers flowing down from the crater rim to the north and building out into a lake to the south, where Mount Sharp is now. NASA scientists who have been studying observations from the Curiosity rover scouring the Red Planet, announced Monday that Mount Sharp may have built up over time from lake sediments. The latest analysis is based on rocks discovered at the lower edges of Mount Sharp, which is located, rather oddly, in the midst of a crater on Earth's neighboring planet. While scientists are still not sure how long Mars was wet for any given spell through history, a 'great surprise' was finding slanted rocks and soil that point to the existence of a lake bed in the crater, said Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology. The Mastcam's left-eye camera recorded the component frames of this mosaic on March 13. | AFP-JIJI