NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured shut‑up views of sprawling, web-like rock formations on Mars that seem like large spiderwebs from orbit and should provide new clues concerning the Purple Planet’s watery previous.
The intricate formations are a part of a boxwork area — networks of low ridges roughly 3 to six ft (1 to 2 meters) tall with sandy hollows between them — that Curiosity has been exploring for months on the slopes of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. The rover captured panoramic photographs of the realm with its Mastcam on Sept. 26, 2025, offering scientists with an unprecedented take a look at the planet’s uncommon terrain, in keeping with a press release from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Understanding these formations may assist researchers refine timelines for when liquid water could have existed close to the Martian floor — a key consider assessing Mars’ previous habitability. The net-like formations recommend groundwater was current later in Mars’ historical past than beforehand thought, elevating new questions on how lengthy the planet could have supported circumstances favorable to microbial life, in keeping with the assertion.
Till Curiosity reached the area, scientists could not affirm what these spiderweb-like formations truly regarded like up shut or totally perceive how they shaped — one thing solely a rover on the bottom may resolve. However getting that view wasn’t straightforward: drivers needed to rigorously steer the practically one-ton rover alongside slim ridgelines barely wider than the car itself to collect the mandatory photographs.
“It virtually appears like a freeway we are able to drive on. However then we’ve to go down into the hollows, the place it’s essential to be aware of Curiosity’s wheels slipping or having bother turning within the sand,” Ashley Stroupe, operations methods engineer at JPL, mentioned within the assertion. “There’s at all times an answer. It simply takes attempting totally different paths.”
Nearer inspection revealed bumpy, pea‑sized mineral nodules embedded within the ridges and hole flooring — one other signature of previous groundwater exercise. Unexpectedly, these nodules weren’t concentrated close to central fractures as predicted, however scattered alongside ridge partitions and depressions, providing new perception on how water and minerals interacted throughout the Martian terrain.
Every layer of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp information a definite chapter of Mars’ altering historical local weather. As Curiosity climbs, the terrain exhibits a transparent shift towards more and more dry circumstances, damaged up by occasional wetter intervals when rivers and lakes briefly resurfaced.
“Seeing boxwork this far up the mountain suggests the groundwater desk needed to be fairly excessive,” Tina Seeger, a mission scientist from Rice College, mentioned within the assertion. “And which means the water wanted for sustaining life may have lasted for much longer than we thought, wanting from orbit.”
Curiosity has additionally been utilizing its drill to gather rock samples from the boxwork area. Analyses of those samples have recognized clay minerals atop ridge tops and carbonate deposits within the hollows — chemical clues that make clear the environmental circumstances when these rocks shaped.
Utilizing a method known as moist chemistry — a course of that makes use of chemical reagents to assist detect natural molecules — scientists regarded for signatures of carbon-based compounds linked to life in pulverized rocks collected throughout Curiosity’s current fourth sampling mission. The rover is anticipated to go away the boxwork formations behind in March because it continues its ascent of Mount Sharp. Exploring this area helps scientists higher perceive how the Purple Planet developed from a moist world to the chilly, dry desert seen at the moment.
