NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover weighed the mountain it’s climbing
Rock under the rover’s wheels is more like soil than cement, a clue to how Mount Sharp formed
For the first time, a Mars rover has measured the mass of the rocks beneath its wheels. By taking gravity measurements as it climbed a Martian mountain, Curiosity discovered something surprising: Mount Sharp appears to have been built in two phases — one soggy, one dry.
The rover found that the rocks it is driving over are less densely packed than scientists expected. That suggests the mountain was not formed just from compressed lake sediments, which would have crushed the rocks at its base more thoroughly.