Curiosity Views Gediz Vallis Ridge; NASA’s strangeness captured this 360-degree panorama

Curiosity Views Gediz Vallis Ridge
NASA’s strangeness captured this 360-degree panorama while parked below Gediz Vallis Ridge (seen at right), a formation that preserves a record of one of the last wet periods seen on this part of Mars. After previous attempts, the rover finally reached the ridge on its fourth try. Three billion years ago, amid one of the last wet periods on Mars, powerful debris flows carried mud and boulders down the side of a hulking mountain. Now, after three attempts, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has reached the ridge, capturing the formation in a 360-degree panoramic mosaic. The rover’s arrival at the ridge has also provided scientists the first up-close views of the eroded remnants of a geologic feature known as a debris flow fan, where debris flowing down the slope spreads out into a fan shape

Explore this Mars panorama in 360-degrees by moving the view with your mouse or mobile device. This mid-afternoon, 360-degree panorama was acquired by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on April 4, 2016. The scene is presented with a color adjustment that approximates white balancing, to resemble how the rocks and sand would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. The view combines dozens of images taken during the mission's 1,302nd sol, or Martian day, by Mastcam's left-eye camera from a location on top of what rover team members call "Naukluft Plateau" on lower Mount Sharp, which stands inside Gale Crater. The science goals of this panorama called only for terrain images, which is why frames showing the sky and rover hardware were not imaged or included in the mosaic. This science mosaic is part of long-term campaign to document the geology along the rover's traverse since landing in August 2012. The foreground and middle distance show a geologic scene dominated by eroded remnants of a finely layered ancient sandstone deposit. The sandstone here appears to be dominated by thick layers of windblown sand, suggesting that these deposits formed in a drier epoch.

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