A Crumbling Layered Butte on Mars
What is this unusual mound on Mars? NASA's Curiosity rover rolling across Mars has come across a group of these mounds that NASA has labelled Murray Buttes. Pictured is a recently assembled mosaic image of one of the last of the buttes passed by Curiosity on its way up Mt. Sharp -- but also one of the most visually spectacular.
Ancient water-deposited layers in relatively dense -- but now dried-out and crumbling -- windblown sandstone tops the 15-meter tall structure. The rim of Gale crater is visible in the distance. Curiosity continues to accumulate clues about how Mars changed from a planet with areas wet and hospitable to microbial life to the dry, barren, rusted landscape seen today.
Image & info via APOD
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS;
Compilation & Processing : Kenneth Kremer, Marco Di Lorenzo
#space #nasa #mars #science #exploration
I wonder if there will be shots of this butte from other angles too?
ReplyDeleteSo, would you classify this as a nice butte? Though prefer Earth ones
Looks a lot like the soil in the vineyards of the Douro valley in Portugal...
ReplyDeleteHudson Ansley I had a similar thought, if they told you that photo us from Earth you would had no problem believing it - which makes me thinks the universe is littered with planets similar to Earth, and the chance many have the "right conditions" for life is not that slim.
ReplyDeleteNow we only need find out how unlikely life is once you have the right conditions - the fact we know it happened once does not help much..
Piero FilippIN exactly so. No matter how likely extraterrestrial life may seem in light of all the exoplanets discovered, we can't say anything about the likeliness until we find at least on other example of life having started elsewhere
ReplyDeleteCheck out the "soil" that these vines grow in:
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/V3mbKySjQfiPbmDT5ySF7DnxUdyj3IEWG5vyFxO-6hryEUoeaVY9ZFe654fPprOyuFQg6t2HjzSGrWh5iXCWsuUk2B1-bhoUKoA4=s0