Strange terrain on the eastern floor of Gale Crater

Click for full image. For the inset, go here.
Though today’s cool image on the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows a small section on the floor of 96-mile-wide Gale Crater where Curiosity has been roving for the past decade, this picture looks at a different place. Curiosity landed in the northwest quadrant of the crater, and has been climbing the western slopes of Mount Sharp, which fills much of the crater’s interior. Today’s image looks at the crater’s floor on the east side of Mount Sharp.
The picture was taken on September 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The dark areas are likely dune seas, while the golden section near the top of the color strip is likely dust, though that is not certain. (This bright yellow is unusual for this particular color filter.) The greenish color suggests coarser materials, such as larger boulders and rocks, though this is also not certain.
The inset zooms into some unusual polygon lines that cut across the dunes and cratered terrain. Such lines suggest that once, in the far past, the ground here was wet. When it dried out (being now in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars) it formed these cracks, similar in nature to the polygon cracks one sees in drying mud on Earth. Since the data from Curiosity when it was on the crater floor also suggests a lake once existed inside the crater, these cracks add weight to that conclusion.
The overview map below places Gale Crater in the larger context of Mars.
» Read more
Click for full image. For the inset, go here.
Though today’s cool image on the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows a small section on the floor of 96-mile-wide Gale Crater where Curiosity has been roving for the past decade, this picture looks at a different place. Curiosity landed in the northwest quadrant of the crater, and has been climbing the western slopes of Mount Sharp, which fills much of the crater’s interior. Today’s image looks at the crater’s floor on the east side of Mount Sharp.
The picture was taken on September 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The dark areas are likely dune seas, while the golden section near the top of the color strip is likely dust, though that is not certain. (This bright yellow is unusual for this particular color filter.) The greenish color suggests coarser materials, such as larger boulders and rocks, though this is also not certain.
The inset zooms into some unusual polygon lines that cut across the dunes and cratered terrain. Such lines suggest that once, in the far past, the ground here was wet. When it dried out (being now in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars) it formed these cracks, similar in nature to the polygon cracks one sees in drying mud on Earth. Since the data from Curiosity when it was on the crater floor also suggests a lake once existed inside the crater, these cracks add weight to that conclusion.
The overview map below places Gale Crater in the larger context of Mars.
» Read more