NASA published a Mastcam panorama, taken on 11 August 2026, of sunrise on yardangs along Mount Sharp. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said the layer may be hardened wind-blown sediment.
NASA on Wednesday released a panorama of dawn on Mars taken by the Curiosity rover. The image, catalogued as PIA25629, shows sunlight on distant wind-carved ridges called yardangs. Curiosity's Mastcam captured it on 11 August 2026, sol 4,982 of the mission, about an hour after sunrise, Reuters reported.
The panorama is six frames stitched together and was processed without the usual white balance so the early-morning colour remains, NASA said. Curiosity has been climbing the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp in Gale Crater since 2014, after landing in 2012.
Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Reuters the bright peaks are a rock layer unlike those the rover has driven through. He said the team thinks it was once wind-blown sediment, possibly sand or ash from nearby volcanic activity, later hardened and carved into yardangs. The layer spans about 10 miles across the northwestern shoulder of Mount Sharp and most likely formed about 3 billion years ago, he said.
NASA said the yardang layer sits above a gap in the stack of layers Curiosity has been reading as a climate record. One theory is that the layer is volcanic ash, similar to deposits near the Martian equator. Scientists are not sure how it formed.
The release is of an image already taken in August. JPL leads the mission for NASA; Malin Space Science Systems built and operates Mastcam. No new driving target was announced with the photo.
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- Ashwin Vasavada said the yardangs were likely wind-blown sediment, maybe sand or ash, later carved by wind.
- He said the layer sits above an unconformity, a gap where older layers eroded before new ones were deposited.