Martian boxwork on the flanks of Mount Sharp
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 5, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.
The picture looks north and downhill from the lower flanks of Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater. In the far distance on the horizon can be seen the crater’s northern rim, about 20 to 30 miles away. As it is now moving into the dusty season on Mars, the haze has increased from only a month ago, making it hard to see many distant details.
In the foreground can be seen clearly the light-colored ridges of the boxwork that the rover has been traversing for the past three months, with one rover track visible on the nearest ridge. Unlike the very rocky and boulder-strewn terrain the rover has seen in most of its travels on Mount Sharp, this boxwork seems smoother.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, with the white dotted line marking its past travels and the red dotted lines marking the planned route. The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the photo above.
At present it is not known publicly how long the science team plans to remain within this boxwork. For the past few months they have been inching Curiosity bit by bit uphill, along the ridges, but always for short distances in order to put it on another ridge or hollow where they can collect more data about the boxwork. I suspect the geology here is quite intriguing and is revealing a lot about past Martian geology that needs untangling.
At some point they will move on uphill, heading south to the next major geological layer, dubbed the sulphur-bearing unit. There the terrain is quite different, very light-colored and appearing to be easily eroded, almost like sand.
It appears in the case of both Curiosity and Perseverance, the government shutdown is slowing their work only slightly. It has stopped updates on some webpages (such as the interactive map showing the rovers’ location), but it does not appear to have stopped their work or rover operations.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 5, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.
The picture looks north and downhill from the lower flanks of Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater. In the far distance on the horizon can be seen the crater’s northern rim, about 20 to 30 miles away. As it is now moving into the dusty season on Mars, the haze has increased from only a month ago, making it hard to see many distant details.
In the foreground can be seen clearly the light-colored ridges of the boxwork that the rover has been traversing for the past three months, with one rover track visible on the nearest ridge. Unlike the very rocky and boulder-strewn terrain the rover has seen in most of its travels on Mount Sharp, this boxwork seems smoother.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, with the white dotted line marking its past travels and the red dotted lines marking the planned route. The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the photo above.
At present it is not known publicly how long the science team plans to remain within this boxwork. For the past few months they have been inching Curiosity bit by bit uphill, along the ridges, but always for short distances in order to put it on another ridge or hollow where they can collect more data about the boxwork. I suspect the geology here is quite intriguing and is revealing a lot about past Martian geology that needs untangling.
At some point they will move on uphill, heading south to the next major geological layer, dubbed the sulphur-bearing unit. There the terrain is quite different, very light-colored and appearing to be easily eroded, almost like sand.
It appears in the case of both Curiosity and Perseverance, the government shutdown is slowing their work only slightly. It has stopped updates on some webpages (such as the interactive map showing the rovers’ location), but it does not appear to have stopped their work or rover operations.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The B&W picture has a definite Ansel Adams feel to it, rather than the alien-landscape it actually is. (Wild West, In Space.)
“The 3 Easiest Fruit Trees for Any Desert Yard”
Edge of Nowhere Farm, Wittmann, Arizona (Sept, 2025)
https://youtu.be/fRM8vkpmyMQ
(8:52)
-spoiler alert: Jujube, Pomegranate, and Mulberry.