August 22, 2023
Introduction:
Read more of the Futurity article here: https://www.futurity.org/nasa-rover-cr ... 2963992/(Futurity) In surprise discovery, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has found cracks in ancient Martian mud.
Scientists aren’t entirely sure how life began on Earth, but one prevailing theory posits that persistent cycles of wet and dry conditions on land helped assemble the complex chemical building blocks necessary for microbial life.
This is why the patchwork of well-preserved ancient mud cracks found by the Curiosity rover is so exciting to the mission’s team.
A new paper in Nature details how the distinctive hexagonal pattern of these mud cracks offers the first evidence of wet-dry cycles occurring on early Mars.
“These particular mud cracks form when wet-dry conditions occur repeatedly, perhaps seasonally,” says the paper’s lead author, William Rapin of France’s Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie.
This article has been adapted from an article first published by NASA: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41 ... TrQ6A%3D