New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen seasonal weather patterns or even flash floods. The research was published today in Nature.
The presence of long-term wet environments, such as evidence of ancient lakes on Mars, is well-documented, but far less is known about short-term climate fluctuations. "A major focus of the Curiosity mission, and one of the main reasons for selecting Gale Crater, is to understand the transition of a 'warm and wet' ancient Mars to a 'cold and dry' Mars we see today," said Patrick Gasda of the Laboratory's Space Remote Sensing and Data Science group and coauthor of the paper."The rover's drive from clay lakebed sediments to drier non-lakebed and sulfate-rich sediments is part of this transition.