Mile-high Mars mounds built by wind and climate change


University Of Texas At Austin


Gale Crater, the landing spot of the Mars rover Curiosity, has a three-mile-high mound at its center called Mount Sharp. Credit: Mackenzie Day There’s been a theory out there that these mounds formed from billions of years of wind erosion, but no one had ever tested that before, Day said. Plan-view digital elevation of the crater model (upper left) shows the crater interior going from filled to mounded to empty. Credit: Mackenzie Day To understand the wind dynamics, researchers also built a computer model that simulated how the wind flowed through the crater at different stages of erosion. The mounds’ structure helps link their formation to climate change on Mars, Kocurek said, with the bottom being built during a wet time, and the top built and mound shaped in a dry time.


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