Giant Mars Crater Holds Martian Secrets For Curiosity Rover

Gale Crater, where Curiosity touched down Sunday night (Aug. 5 PDT), is a unique and intriguing place where Curiosity could make serious scientific hay over the next several years, researchers and NASA officials say.

“We are going to have the opportunity for untold discoveries,” Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said on Sunday before Curiosity landed. “This location, Gale Crater, is absolutely amazing.”

This image shows the location (green) where scientists estimate NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars within Gale Crater, based on images from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI). The landing estimates derived from navigation and landing data agree to within 660 feet (200 meters) of this MARDI estimate.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/University of Arizona

A mountain inside a crater

Gale Crater, which was announced as Curiosity’s destination in July 2011, sits a few degrees south of the Martian equator. While the crater is 96 miles wide (154 kilometers), Gale’s size is not its most eye-catching feature. That would be Mount Sharp, the giant mountain rising from Gale’s center. [Gallery: Gale Crater, Curiosity's Landing Site]

At 3 miles high (5 km), Mount Sharp is taller than any peak in the continental United States. Scientists think it’s the remnant of a much larger block that once filled Gale Crater, though they’re not sure exactly how the mound formed.

“In one go, you have flat-lying strata that are 5 kilometers thick,” Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, a geologist at Caltech in Pasadena, told SPACE.com last month. “There’s nothing like that on Earth.”

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