Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created using two pictures taken by the high resolution camera on the rover Curiosity on Mars (here and here).

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s position on the day before these pictures were taken, climbing through the foothills on the flanks of Mount Sharp. I do not know if it traveled again before taking these two pictures above. The white dotted line its past travels, while the red dotted line its planned future route. At present Curiosity has climbed about 3,500 feet up the mountain. It is still about 15,000 feet below the peak, which is about 25 miles away and not visible from here.

The yellow lines indicate where I think the panorama is looking, though I admit that I am not sure. The view is distant, since this is high resolution camera. This panorama might actually be looking in a completely different direction, downhill at one of the hills that Curiosity previously drove past. The air is very dusty, which means if the rim of Gale Crater is in the background, 20-30 miles away, we can’t see it.

Regardless, the science team has finally finished its many nine-month-long survey of the boxwork geology, and has sent Curiosity climbing again. I think these pictures are part of their review of the future terrain, as they plan the rover’s route through the lighter-colored sulfate terrain higher on the mountain. If instead they are looking downhill, they were taken both to review previously viewed geology as well as to measure the dustiness of the atmosphere.

Every few months or so the Curiosity science team uses one of the rover’s cameras to do a survey of the rover’s wheels to track their condition. Since early in the mission they had found the wheels were not holding up as well as expected as they rolled over the rough terrain in Gale Crater and on Mount Sharp, and so they take great care in how they move the rover as well as review the wheels regularly.

A year ago it had appeared that the damage to one particular wheel had increased, to a point where its outer section might even break off.

Yesterday the science team did another survey, as shown in the picture to the right.

The two photos above (found here and here) focus on one particular wheel of that survey, which I suspect is the same wheel that was the focus of last year’s post. After taking the first image on the left the team moved Curiosity so that the other side of the wheel could be photographed. As you can see, the damage is extensive, so much so that it is possible the wheel could collapse entirely in the not-to-distant future.

It also looks like another wheel is beginning to see similar damage (see here and here), though not yet as extreme.

The good news is that Curiosity has six wheels, and that it can continue to travel even with the loss of one or maybe two wheels. It also appears that future terrain might not be so rocky.

The bad news is that this wheel damage is likely the one problem that will likely end the mission, possibly sooner than anyone would like. And from these photographs, that end might be sooner rather than later.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Since May 2025 Curiosity has been exploring in great detail the boxwork formations located on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. It is now about to complete those investigations, with the Curiosity science team beginning their planning for moving onward and upward.

The panorama above, enhanced to post here, was taken on March 2, 2026 by the rover’s right navigation camera. It looks uphill along the valley that Curiosity is in toward the mountainous region the rover is targeting. Note that the peak of Mount Sharp is not visible, being more than 25 miles away beyond the horizon and about 15,000 feet higher up.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right mark Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area this panorama covers. The red dotted line marks the rover’s approximate planned route, while the white dotted line indicates Curiosity’s actual travels.

Right now Curiosity is traveling through a geological layer the scientists have dubbed the sulfate unit. The lighter colored hills seen on the horizon have also been identified as sulfate, but believed to be much more pure. The geology there should be very different. Instead of rough and rocky it could be like traveling over soft porous sand. This however is merely a guess on my part, based on imagery of those light-colored hills.

The actual route through those hills however remains unknown. Either the science team has not yet released it, or is still trying to figure out the best way through.

It appears the solar conjunction that has blocked all communications with the rovers and orbiters for the past three weeks around Mars has now fully ended, with the first new images appearing today from both Curiosity and Perseverance.

The two images to the right were downloaded today. The top image was taken on January 20, 2026 by Curiosity’s front hazard avoidance camera. It appears to be looking uphill in the direction the rover is soon to travel, climbing Mount Sharp. If you look closely you can see the mountain’s higher ranges on the horizon, just to the right of the rover itself.

The bottom picture was actually taken on January 15, 2026 by Perseverance, but was only downloaded today. Both science teams had programmed their rovers to take images throughout the conjunction, scheduled for download when communications resumed.

The picture was taken by Perseverance’s left high resolution camera located on top of the rover’s mast. It looks down at the ground near the rover at the pebbles and rocks that strewn the relatively smooth surface of the terrain west of Jezero crater.

Neither image is particularly ground-breaking. What is important however is that both images prove the rovers are functioning as expected. Expect a lot more data to arrive in the next few days, all gathered during three weeks of blackout.

Click for original.

The two images to the right, both downloaded today (here and here) from the Mars rovers Curiosity (top) and Perseverance, illustrate quite clearly the beginning of the three-week-long communications blackout from Mars caused every two years when the orbits of Earth and Mars places the Sun in-between. As the Curiosity science team noted in a December 22, 2025 update:

This holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.

Apparently engineers were able to squeeze data and images from Mars for a few extra days, but the incomplete nature of these two pictures — combined with the lack of any other new images today — tells us that the blackout has definitely begun. That they were able to get these additional images after conjunction began suggests the blackout might also end a bit earlier than expected.

Though there is always a concern that something could go wrong while communications are blocked, the risks are small. The science teams for all the Mars orbiters and rovers have dealt with this situation now almost a dozen times since operations became routine there more than a quarter century ago.

The only spacecraft at real risk this conjunction is Maven. Contact was lost from it in early December for unknown reasons, and all efforts to regain communications have so far failed. All engineers know from the little data they have gotten back is it appears to be tumbling. This three week blackout will make any chance of recovery extremely unlikely.

This communications pause occurs every two years, when the orbits of Earth and Mars align with the Sun in between.

This holiday season coincides with conjunction — every two years, because of their different orbits, Earth and Mars are obstructed from one another by the Sun; this one will last from Dec. 27 to Jan. 20. We do not like to send commands through the Sun in case they get scrambled, so we have been finishing up a few last scientific observations before preparing Curiosity for its quiet conjunction break.

This is not a unique situation. Both rovers have gone through conjunction several times previously. The science teams will place the rovers in secure positions to hold them over during the break.

As for the orbiters circling Mars, it isn’t clear how much their operations will be impacted. The update at the link above makes no mention of them, and my memory says communications with them is less hampered, though reduced somewhat.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from three photographs taken on December 18, 2025 (here, here, and here) by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The view is north, looking down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its rim about 20 to 30 miles away. In comparing this view with a similar one taken in July, it is obvious that the Martian atmosphere has become far dustier during the last six months. The rim and the mountains beyond are hardly visible now through the haze.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area covered by this panorama. The while dotted line indicates the rover’s travels, while the red dotted line its planned routes.

As you can see by both the rover’s tracks in the panorama above and the white dotted line in the overview, Curiosity has been traversing back and forth across the boxwork formation of criss-crossing ridges for more than half a year, as the science team attempts to decipher what caused these ridges and hollows. They have also done some drilling in this effort.

The science team has been getting close to the day it will move on, resuming Curiosity’s climb of Mount Sharp, but they keep finding things amidst this boxwork that requires additional study. For example, consider this from yesterday’s update:

The weekend drive starting from the “Nevado Sajama” drill site brought Curiosity back into the “Monte Grande” boxwork hollow. We’ve been in this hollow before for the “Valle de la Luna” drill campaign, but now that the team has seen the results from both the “Valle de la Luna” and “Nevado Sajama” drilled samples, we’ve decided that there’s more work to do here.

Overall science goals here included analysis of the other well-exposed bedrock block in Monte Grande to improve our statistics on the composition of the bedrock in the hollows, and also high-resolution imaging and compositional analysis of portions of the walls of the hollow, other than those that had been covered during the Valle de la Luna campaign. These are part of a systematic mini-campaign to map a transect over the hollow-to-ridge structure from top to bottom at this site.

The post-drive imaging revealed a surprise — Valle de la Luna’s neighboring block was covered with polygons! As it turned out, the rover’s position during our previous visit for the Valle de la Luna drill campaign happened to have stood in the way of imaging of the polygonal features on this block so this was our first good look at them. We have seen broadly similar polygonal patterns in various strata in Gale Crater before — recently in the layered sulfate units (for instance, during Sols 4532-4533 and Sols 4370-4371) but we hadn’t seen them in the bottom of a boxwork hollow. [emphasis mine]

So don’t expect Curiosity to start climbing just yet.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 6, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity.

The picture looks north across Gale Crater, its distant rim about 20-30 miles away barely visible in the dusty atmosphere. In the foreground can be seen Curiosity’s recent tracks, showing how the science team had it travel back and forth several times, probably to check out several different interesting nearby ground features, as well as see how the ground changed by that travel. The rover has been traveling in an area called boxwork, a series of small intercutting ridges and hollows. Several of those ridges can be seen just beyond the tracks.

The red dotted line indicates my rough estimate as to the rover’s route uphill to get to this point, traveling up and to the left and following ridges just out of view.

Click for interactive map.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks the rover’s present position, when it took this picture, with the yellow lines indicating roughly the area covered. On the map, the white dotted line indicates the route traveled, the red dotted lines the planned route.

Though the interactive map says it shows the rover’s travels through today, the website also has a notice at the top stating that “Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website.” Thus, I am unsure if the rover’s present location as shown is accurate. The foreground ridges in the picture seem to match nearest ridges on the map, but I admit to a great deal of uncertainty.

If the location is accurate, it appears the science team has maintained the rover during the shutdown, using it to take a large number of daily pictures from the same site, but has not moved it. If not, we will only find out precisely where it has traveled when the shutdown ends.

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.

Click for interactive map

In reviewing the pictures downloaded today by the Mars rover Curiosity, I noticed something very intriguing in the pictures taken by rover’s two navigation cameras. One such picture is above, taken by the right navigation camera and looking west across the boxwork ridges that Curiosity has been traversing for the past two months. You can see two such ridges in the right foreground, cutting diagonally from left to right.

The overview map to the right gives the context, with the blue dot marking Curiosity’s position. The white and red dotted lines indicate its actual and planned routes respectively, with the top inset zooming in to show the recent travels more clearly. The yellow lines show the approximate area covered by the picture above.

Note the dark streak in the lower right of the picture. The bottom inset on the overview map shows this streak more closely. To my eye, it strongly resembles a slope streak, a strange geological feature unique to Mars.

If I am right, expect the rover team to focus in on this streak. The cause of slope streaks remains unknown. From orbit, the streaks look like avalanches at first glance, but they don’t change the topography, have no debris pile at their base, and sometimes even travel up and over rises as they head downhill. They can occur randomly throughout the year, can be bright or dark, can occur anywhere, and fade with time.

There are a number of theories (see here, here, and here) attempting to explain their cause, but none has been confirmed. If this is a streak, it will be the first that any scientist can see up close.

It is also very likely my guess is wrong, and this is not a streak. Stay tuned for updates.

Click for original image.

Time for two cool images, from two different craters separated by thousands of miles on Mars! The first image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 24, 2025 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the robot arm of Mars rover Curiosity, and shows a really strange rock formation that resembles a piece of coral on Earth.

Curiosity has found many small features like this one, which formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars [in this region]. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing unique shapes.

The second image, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 5, 2025 by the left high resolution camera on the rover Perseverance. It shows what appears what geologists call a “float rock”, something that was created geologically somewhere else and transported to this location later.

In this case the rock appears lavalike in nature. Since Perseverance is exploring the exterior rim of Jezero Crater, we could be looking at the impact melt created when the bolide hit the ground to create the crater. Material would be instantly melted as well as flung outward as ejecta, with this strangely shaped rock an example.

The problem with this theory however is that the rock appears to have solidified well before it hit the ground at this location. Its shape also suggests it solidified within a crack, thus molding it to this shape, with its top once at the bottom, the lava flowing downward. The mystery then is how it ended up as we see it, upside down and exposed.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 28, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks to the north, down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its mountainous rim about 30 miles way, seen on the horizon.

The view is so clear because of the season, as noted in the science team’s blog post today:

We’re still in the time of year where the atmosphere at Gale is reasonably dust-free (at least, compared to later in the year), allowing us to look all the way out to and beyond the Gale crater rim. The upper slopes of Mount Sharp have also re-emerged to our east after spending months hidden behind the walls of Gediz Vallis. There’s a bit more sand and dust in this location than we’ve seen recently, so we can also see the trail left behind by the rover’s wheels as we drove to this location

The ridge in the foreground is an example of the boxwork Curiosity is presently traversing. It is now on one of those ridges, and will be moving along it in short drives as the science team studies the geology here. The rover’s tracks leading up to this position can be seen clearly.

Click for interactive map.

The overview map to the right gives the larger context within Gale Crater. The white line marks Curiosity’s travels since it landed in 2012. The blue dot marks its present position, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area viewed by the above picture.

This map provides an overall snapshot of Curiosity entire journey so far in Gale Crater. It has traveled just over 22 miles in the last thirteen years, climbing about 2,600 feet from the crater floor. To get to the peak of Mount Sharp however will require another 25 miles of travel climbing another 16,000 feet.

Thus, though Curiosity has provided us some spectacular views of the most dramatic landscape so far explored on another world, it really has only covered a tiny portion of Mars. The land surface of the Red Planet is actually comparable to that of Earth, since Mars has no oceans. The rovers have barely seen three dozen miles of terrain, and have taken decades to do so.

If we really want to explore Mars, we really have no choice but to go their ourselves. Robotic rovers or even robotic helicopters will only give us a narrow glimpse. We need feet on the ground to truly see this place, as it is.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped to post here, was taken on July 20, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks uphill to the south into the canyon that Curiosity will eventually travel, with the white chaotic upper flanks of Mount Sharp on the horizon. The mountain’s peak itself is out of view, about 25 miles away.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, on the northern edge of the large patch of very distinct boxwork ridges visible from orbit. You can see these ridges in the foreground of the panorama above.

The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line roughly indicates the rover’s future travels. At the moment, however, it is going nowhere, as the science team is focused on studying these boxwork ridges in the hope they can determine their origin. Such features are usually associated with cracking later filled with lava, with the polygon-shaped cracking usually associated with a formerly wet environment drying.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, assembled from two pictures taken on June 23, 2025 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, looks to the south and uphill into the canyon that the rover will eventually climb.

The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present location, the white line its past travel route, and the red dotted line its future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama.

The science team is presently exploring the boxwork formation on the right, and should spend at least the next month or so there before moving on. As the rover moves up into this canyon we should also expect the science team to spend a great deal of time studying that many layered cliff face to the right.

Eventually the rover will enter those white very hilly regions on the horizon. No route through those hills however has yet been chosen.

Click for interactive map

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped to post here, was taken on June 10, 2025 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, and shows some of the stranger terrain found higher up the flanks of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, where it is doing another drilling campaign into the first boxwork geology it has encountered. The white line marks its past travels, while the green dotted line its planned route.

The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the picture above. The wild mountain peaks on the horizon are part of the sulfate-bearing unit that appears very bright in the overview map. The material that makes up this terrain appears to be very easily eroded, based on its features as seen from orbit, as well as Curiosity’s distant view. Whether that erosion was wind, water, or ice, remains undetermined, and is the main question Curiosity will attempt to answer once it gets there, likely in a year or so.

Regardless, the landscape appears almost like it soft sand being washed away.

Where the rover will go next the science team has not yet decided. It will definitely continue uphill, but they do not yet know the route they will take through that sulfate-bearing unit.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken on June 7, 2025 (here, here, and here) by the high resolution camera on top of the Mars rover Curiosity, looks south and uphill into the Gediz Vallis canyon that the rover had been traveling previously.

The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot Curiosity’s present position, where it is about to begin a drilling campaign into the first boxwork structures the rover has reached. The white dotted line marks its past travels, while the green dotted line its planned future route. The red dotted line marks a planned route that has been abandoned.

The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama. Because this used the rover’s high resolution camera, the view gives us a detailed look at the mountains on the distant horizon. Though we are looking uphill, the peaks in the distance are merely higher ridges and hills on the flanks of Mount Sharp. The mountain’s peak is out of view, about 25 miles away and about 15,000 feet higher up.

Note the dusty and what appears to be a softened nature of the terrain on these higher peaks. Since entering the foothills of Mount Sharp several years ago, the surface has been extremely rocky and rough, every inch covered in boulders of all sizes. This distant view suggests the ground might become easier to traverse at those higher altitudes. It also appears there will be a lot more dust, coating everything.

The lighting I think is close to natural. Because Mars is farther from the Sun, it doesn’t get as much light. Even during mid-day the light to our Earth-borne eyes would more resemble dusk on Earth.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from two photographs taken on May 23, 2025 by the left navigation camera (here and here) on the Mars rover Curiosity, looks south uphill into the canyon that Curiosity is eventually going to climb.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, the white dotted line its past travels, the red dotted line its initial planned route, and the green dotted line its future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area seen in the panorama above.

If you look on the horizon to the left, you can see very bright terrain higher up the mountain. This is the pure sulfate-bearing unit that is Curiosity’s next major geological goal. It won’t reach that terrain for quite some time however because first the scientists want to spend some time studying the boxwork geology that Curiosity is now approaching. That boxwork suggests two past geological processes, as yet unconfirmed. First it suggests the ground dried like mud, forming a polygon pattern of cracks that then hardened into rock. Second, lava seeped up from below and filled those cracks. The lava, being more resistant to erosion, ended up becoming the boxwork of ridges as the material around eroded away.

This proposed history however is not proven. They hope to find out when Curiosity gets there.

Meanwhile, despite having traveled almost 22 miles, the rover is more than 25 miles from the peak of Mount Sharp, which remains out of sight. That peak is also about 15,000 feet higher.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, taken on May 14, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, takes a look uphill at the canyon that the rover is now entering.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The blue dot marks the rover’s location when the picture was taken, and the yellow lines indicate approximately the view of the panorama above. If you look closely at the ground at the base of the cliff on the right, you can see the boxwork ridges indicated on the overview map.

The red dotted line marks the original planned route of the rover. The science team abandoned that plan several months ago in order to get to the boxwork geology as quickly as possible. It expects to reach that boxwork sometime in the next month or so.

Based on the proposed route posted in September 2023, after the scientists have completed their observations of the boxwork the rover will continue uphill within this canyon, bearing east as it parallels that 100-foot-high cliff seen on the horizon. The green dotted line indicates roughly that future route.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), scientists have captured a very cool image of Curiosity in its recent travels on Mars. That picture is above, reduced and sharpened to post here.

Taken by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the image shows Curiosity as a dark speck at the front of a long trail of rover tracks. Likely to last for months before being erased by wind, the tracks span about 1,050 feet (320 meters). They represent roughly 11 drives starting on Feb. 2 as Curiosity trucked along at a top speed of 0.1 mph (0.16 kph) from Gediz Vallis channel on the journey to its next science stop: a region with potential boxwork formations, possibly made by groundwater billions of years ago.

The overview map to the right provides some context. Curiosity’s present position is indicated by the blue dot. The yellow lines indicate the approximate section of its past travels photographed by the picture above.

According to the press release at the link, the science team is now estimating the rover will arrive at the boxwork geology in about a month.

In a set of new pictures taken of Curiosity’s wheels yesterday it appears that the damage to those wheels has increased significantly in the past year, with the most damaged wheel (which based on contradictory science team reports is either the middle left or middle right wheel), having more had more sections broken to the point where this wheel might even fail in the near future.

The pictures to the right show these changes. The treads, called grousers, have been numbered to make the comparisons easier. The bottom two pictures were taken in September 2024, and look at this wheel with the damage on the side to show how a whole section of the wheel had at that time collapsed to form a depression.

The top two pictures show the increase in the damage in this section between February 2024 and yesterday. Note especially the changes in growlers 4, 5, and 6. Not only have large sections broken off in the wheel’s central section, it appears that the wheel’s outside section is beginning to separate from that central section.

The increased damage in the past year illustrated starkly the roughness of the terrain that the rover is traversing. Moreover, there is no sign that roughness is going to ease anytime in the near future. This increased damage thus explains partly why the science team changed the rover’s route to get to the nearby boxwork geology as fast as possible. That unique geology is likely to provide some important scientific information unobtainable elsewhere, and it seems worthwhile to get to it before this particular wheel fails.

There is one silver lining to this cloud. This particular wheel is a middle wheel, which means it is less critical to maintaining the rover’s stability as it travels as well as sits. The photographs of the other wheels taken today do not show as much change. Even if this wheel fails, the rover will still have five working wheels, including the most essential four corner wheels.

If that quantity of carbon is confirmed, there might also have been a carbon cycle between Mars’s atmosphere and the liquid water theorized to have once been on the surface. This cycle could also have made the atmosphere both thicker and warmer, conditions necessary for that liquid water to exist on the surface. From the research paper:

[D]ecomposition of siderite occurred in multiple locations and released CO2 into the atmosphere, recycling CO2 that was originally sequestered during siderite formation. Diagenetic carbonate destruction observed elsewhere on Mars, in martian meteorites, and in sandstones on Earth yields nearly identical reaction products to those we found in Gale crater and are observed globally in orbital data. We therefore conclude that in situ, orbital, and terrestrial analog evidence all indicate that postdepositional alteration of siderite closed the loop in Mars’ carbon cycle, by returning CO2 to the atmosphere.

The uncertainties here are gigantic. For these conclusions to be right, the scientists extrapolate without evidence the same amount of CO2 found in these four cores as existing across the entire surface of Mars. That is a very big extrapolation that no one should take very seriously.

Furthermore, this research assumes the geological features we see on Mars were formed from liquid water. More recent orbital data suggests glacial and ice processes might have played a part instead, with one study concluding that Gale Crater was never warm enough for long-standing liquid water, and that ice and glacial processes must have played the larger part in forming what we find there.

The data from these core samples however is intriguing for sure, though it mostly raises more questions about Mars’ past geological history than it answers.

The science team for the Mars rover Curiosity has been moving the rover as fast as it can in order to get to the intriguing boxwork geology about a half mile to the west and slightly higher on Mount Sharp.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken today by the rover’s left navigation camera, and looks downhill to the north from within the parallel canyon Curiosity entered earlier this week. Because the Martian atmosphere was especially clear at the time, the mountains that form the rim of Gale Crater are quite distinct, 20 to 30 miles away. The view down the canyon also provides a vista of the crater’s floor, more than 3,000 feet below.

In the past two Martian days the science team has had the rover climb uphill a total of 364 feet, a remarkably fast pace considering the rocky nature of the terrain. It appears the engineers have done a spectacular job refining the rover’s software so that it is possible for it to pick its way autonomously through this minefield of rocks, and do so without subjecting its already damaged wheels to more damage.

Click for interactive map.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks the position. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the picture above. The red dotted lines indicates the original planned route, now abandoned. The green dotted line is my guess as to the route the rover will take to get to the boxwork and then beyond.

Based on the present pace, Curiosity should reach the nearest boxwork features within a week. Though the science team has not said how much time they will spend studying this geology, expect them to remain there for at least three months, especially as there are several different patches of boxwork to explore. If they decide to drill a core and do some analysis, expect that time to be twice as long.

Beyond that the route up the mountain in this particular canyon appears largely clear. The views as Curiosity climbs should thus become even more spectacular as it gains more altitude.

Getting to the peak of Mount Sharp however is still going to take years. Even though Curiosity has climbed more than 3,000 feet, the peak remains more than 15,000 feet higher up, and more than 25 miles away.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The Curiosity science team has finally completed the rover’s climb up one canyon on the flanks of Mount Sharp and crossed over into a second, switch-backing up through a gap they have dubbed Devil’s Gate.

The panorama above, created from three pictures taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on April 9, 2025 (here, here, and here) looks south from that gap. On the horizon about 20-30 miles away can be seen the rim of Gale Crater. From this position the floor of the crater is almost out of side, blocked by the foothills on the lower flanks of Mount Sharp.

Though the ground in this new canyon (on the left of the panorama) continues to be amazingly rocky and boulder strewn, it is actually more benign that the canyon Curiosity has been climbing for the past six weeks.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate direction of the panorama. The rover’s next major geological goal is the boxwork to the southwest. In order to get to it quickly the science team decided to abandon its original planned route, indicated by the dotted red line, and climb upward through these canyons.

The detection of these long and large carbon molecules was based not on actual Martian data, taken at a site dubbed Cumberland on the floor of Gale Crater, but on follow-up lab work on Earth.

The recent organic compounds discovery was a side effect of an unrelated experiment to probe Cumberland for signs of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. After heating the sample twice in [the Curiosity] SAM’s oven and then measuring the mass of the molecules released, the team saw no evidence of amino acids. But they noticed that the sample released small amounts of decane, undecane, and dodecane [thought to be fragments of fatty acids].

Because these compounds could have broken off from larger molecules during heating, scientists worked backward to figure out what structures they may have come from. They hypothesized these molecules were remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, and tridecanoic acid, respectively.

The scientists tested their prediction in the lab, mixing undecanoic acid into a Mars-like clay and conducting a SAM-like experiment. After being heated, the undecanoic acid released decane, as predicted. The researchers then referenced experiments already published by other scientists to show that the undecane could have broken off from dodecanoic acid and dodecane from tridecanoic acid.

Based on this Earth lab work, the scientists now suggest that Mars could also have these much longer carbon molecules that are associated with biological processes.

Very intriguing, but we must exercise caution. Curiosity did not detect such molecules, only evidence that they might exist on Mars. And even if they do exist on Mars, this is not evidence that Mars has or once had biological life. While such large molecules on Earth are usually associated with biological processes, they do not have to be, as the scientists readily admit in their abstract. Furthermore, in the alien environment of Mars there could be many non-biological processes we don’t even yet understand that could explain their existence.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped slightly to post here, was taken today by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks north from the rover’s present location on the flank of Mount Sharp, with the rim of Gale Crater in the far distance about 20 to 30 miles away. Curiosity now sits about 3,000 feet above the floor of the crater.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks the rover’s position at this time. The yellow lines indicate the approximate view of the panorama. As with all of the images from both Curiosity and Perseverance, the main impression is a barren and lifeless landscape of incredible stark beauty.

It is now very evident that the Curiosity science team has made the decision to abandon their original route to the west. Instead, they have decided to strike south up into this canyon because it provides them the easiest and fastest route to the boxwork geology to the southwest. It also has them climbing into new geological layers rather than descending into layers that the rover has already seen.

Click for interactive map.

The panorama above, reduced and sharpened to post here, was created by me from two photographs taken on February 23, 2025 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Curiosity rover on Mars.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, with the white dotted line its past travels and the red dotted lines its planned route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above.

Several things to note. The boxwork indicated on lower left of the overview map is the rover’s next major geological target. Though the rover team has made no announcement of a major route change, they have clearly diverged from that route by heading south and uphill into this canyon.

In reviewing the interactive map, I have not found any really good route up to the boxwork, other than this canyon. My guess is that the rover team is scouting it out as a possible new route. The panorama above is part of that scouting, and it certainly suggests that the canyon would be a good way to go.

They might also be considering this change because the old route would take them downhill, which would only have them studying geological layers they have already seen up close in Curiosity’s earlier travels. The team might have decided to forego the old route because it would not only look at geology already documented, it would add stress to Curiosity’s already stressed wheels. Since it appears the terrain up hill is going to continue to be this rough for as far as the eye can see, they likely decided it was better to move into unexplored geology now rather than later.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above was created by me from three images taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera today (available here, here, and here).

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The red dotted line marks the planned route, while the white dotted line its actual travels. The yellow lines indicate the area covered by the panorama above.

The butte in the center where the red dotted line ends is about a half mile away. The far rim of Gale Crater is about 25 to 30 miles beyond. Though Curiosity has climbed about 3,000 feet from the floor of the crater where it landed, it still sits about 5,000 feet below the top of the crater’s rim.

As you can see, the air at Gale Crater has cleared somewhat from December 2024. Then the rim was barely visible. Now it can be seen, though the crater floor is still obscured by a layer of dust.

The journey west continues to slow but steady. The rover can only go so far each day across this very rough terrain, so as to protect its already damaged wheels.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was part of a panorama created by 24 photos taken by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity on December 16, 2024.

The view looks west at the foothills that fill the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. In the far distance, about 20 to 30 miles away, can be seen the western rim of Gale Crater, obscured by the dust in the Martian atmosphere.

Curiosity is presently contouring west along the mountain slope. As it goes it will pass a series of canyons coming down the mountainside. The goal is to eventually reach the canyon the science team has chosen to take for climbing that mountain.

Note the rocky ground. One of the surprises found as Curiosity left the crater floor and started climbing Mount Sharp about four years ago is the rockiness of the terrain. Unlike Earth, Mars’s atmosphere and environment does not have the activity to smooth out this landscape. While science data suggests flowing water was once present here, it wasn’t here long enough to smooth things out. And the atmosphere is just too thin.

Click for interactive map.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s position when it took this image above. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the picture. The dotted red line on the picture above as well as on the map is the rover’s planned route. I have indicated two routes going around that distant ridge because I am unsure exactly how high on the ridge the science team plans to send Curiosity.

As Curiosity works its way west along the slope, it will eventually reach an area where the ground has some boxwork features [pdf]. The research paper at the link proposed this boxwork was “formed when cements filled existing pore spaces and fractures in fractured rock, and these cements were left as topographic ridges after erosion.”

The scientists want to find out if this theory is right.

According to an update yesterday from the rover team, the Mars rover Curiosity has finally begun to round the corner of the northern nose of the long ridge dubbed Texoli that forms the western wall of Gediz Vallis, the slot canyon that the rover has been exploring since August 2022.

The picture to the right, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on December 10, 2024 and shows the view looking west. The red dotted line indicates the planned route. As the rocky ground indicates, travel forward in the near term will be interesting. As noted in the update:

While we want to head southwest, we had to divert a bit to the north (right of the image shown) to avoid some big blocks and high tilt. The path is very constrained in order to avoid driving over some smaller pointy rocks, scraping wheels along the sides of blocks, or steering into the side of blocks that might cause the steering to fail. And we also needed to worry about our end-of-drive heading to be sure the antenna will be clear to talk to Earth for the next plan. We ended up relying on the onboard behavior to help us optimize everything by implementing a really interesting and curvy 24-meter path (about 79 feet).

Click for interactive map.

The overview map to the right provides some context. As with the image above, the red dotted line marks the planned route west towards a parallel canyon that the rover will take south up Mount Sharp. The blue dot marks the rover’s present position, with the yellow lines indicating the approximate area covered by the picture above.

Curiosity is going to contouring along the slope of Mount Sharp for a considerable time as it works its way west. The journey will likely be a lot more twisted then indicated by the red dotted line, as the rover team guides Curiosity around the worst rocks to protect its damaged wheels while travelling as far as possible with each drive.

The views however will continue to be spectacular, especially to the north, looking downhill out across Gale Crater. Curiosity is now in among the hills, and high enough up Mount Sharp to produce views routinely that are amazing.

Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped and annotated to post here, was taken on October 6, 2024 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks south, down the slopes of Mount Sharp and across Gale Crater, the distant crater rim barely visible through the dusty air twenty to thirty miles away.

The overview map to the right provide the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s planned route, with the white dotted line the path it has recently traveled.

As you can see, the rover has moved up onto a higher terrace surrounding the Texoli butte, and will now travel downhill a bit to skirt around its northern nose. From there, the science team plans to send the rover westward, traversing along the contour lines on the side of Mount Sharp. Along the way it will lose more elevation, but eventually, after passing several parallel north-south trending canyons, it will finally turn south into one canyon to resume its climb up the mountain.

To review the rover’s journey, Curiosity during its dozen years on Mars has traveled just over 20 miles and climbed about 2,500 feet. The peak of Mount Sharp however is still about 26 miles away and about 16,000 feet higher. Getting there will probably take at least three more decades, which is possible since the rover uses a nuclear power source similar to that used by the two Voyager interplanetary probes, now functioning in space for almost a half century.

In fact, it would not surprise me if the first human Mars colonies are established while Curiosity is still working, and that in its later years it sends its data to that colony directly (via an orbiting relay satellite), rather than beaming it back to Earth.