Click for interactive map.

According to an update posted today by William Farrand on the Curiosity science team, the rover on August 26, 2026 achieved a new milestone, in that it has now climbed a total of one kilometer in elevation since it landed in Gale Crater more than eleven years ago.

The overview map to the right shows the rover’s entire journey, now exceeding 23 and a half miles. Though it has climbed 1,000 meters, or about 3,280 feet, it still has about 14,720 feet to go before it reaches the top of Mount Sharp, about 29 miles away to the southeast.

As the rover has been climbing it has found Mars to be a many-layered planet, with layers upon layers, each holding thinner layers within layers, down almost to a microscopic level, implying that the geological history of the red planet is made up of many cycles, repeating endlessly. And along the way the rover keeps finding strange geology, such as the cool image below.

Click for original image.

The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on September 7, 2026 by Curiosity’s high resolution camera. It gives us just one more example of the weird and delicate rock features that the rover has been finding since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp in 2022.

In the past, the features tended to be fragile flat flakes extending out into space, pieces of a layer that had not yet been worn away by the very thin Martian wind.

In this case however we have something even stranger, nodules stuck together and hanging in space. These were apparently formed in a group, with later erosion wearing away the ground under them to leave them hanging out in this manner. Because there is no rain on Mars, and the atmosphere is so thin, the erosion processes allow such delicate formations to survive.

What formed them initially however is inexplicable. This reminds me of some cave formations I have seen, but I won’t dare apply the Earth-based formation processes on these Martian features.