NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Treks Across Ancient Glaciers Near Gale Crater

NASA Mars rover Curiosity is still trekking across the Red Planet, traversing the Gale crater. After an entire Martian year on the planet, though, the rover is now shedding more light on the ancient glaciers that once covered the crater.

The rover has now spent a total of 687 Earth days on the Red Planet this week, marking an entire Martian year. It's currently traveling across a red and arid landscape that about 3,500 million years ago was home to glaciers and liquid water rivers which flowed into lakes in low-lying areas. These glaciers were particularly prominent in the central mound, known as Aeolis Mons.

How do researchers know that the glaciers existed in the first place? The scientists used images captured with the HiRISE and CTX cameras from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Together with the HRSC onboard the Mars Express probe, the pictures revealed the presence of concave basins, lobated structures, the remains of moraines and fan-shaped deposits. Altogether, these findings hinted at the existence of ancient glaciers on Gale. In fact, these glaciers were probably very similar to the ones on Earth today.

"For example, there is a glacier on Iceland-known as Breiðamerkurjökull-which shows evident resemblances to what we see on Gale crater, and we suppose that is very similar to those which covered Gale's central mound in the past," said Alberto Faren, one of the researchers, in a news release. "As part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) NASA mission, the Curiosity rover can still find evidence of past glacial activity on Gale, and on a very small-scale, for example finding accumulations of angular to sub-angular boulders, striated bedrock and striated boulder pavements and boulder chains."

The latest findings uncovered by Curiosity actually support the idea of a global "cold and wet" model of the ancient Martian environment. This particular model explains the geological traces of the presence of liquid water in the past. In addition, the findings reveal a bit more about the Gale crater, which is thought to have formed after an impact from a massive meteorite about 3,600 million years ago.

The findings are published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.