NASA Curiosity Rover: Mars Mount Sharp Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water

Researchers based at Princeton University, the California Institute of Technology and Ashima Research suggest that Mars' roughly 3.5-mile high Mount Sharp (above) most likely emerged as strong winds carried dust and sand into Gale Crater where the mound sits. 

If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound is the remnant of a massive lake, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound's features suggests.

They report in the journal Geology that air likely rises out of the massive Gale Crater when the Martian surface warms during the day, then sweeps back down its steep walls at night.

Though strong along the Gale Crater walls, these "slope winds" would have died down at the crater's center where the fine dust in the air settled and accumulated to eventually form Mount Sharp, which is close in size to Alaska's Mt. McKinley.

This dynamic counters the prevailing theory that Mount Sharp formed from layers of lakebed silt—and could mean that the mound contains less evidence of a past, Earth-like Martian climate than most scientists currently expect.

Evidence that Gale Crater once contained a lake in part determined the landing site for the NASA Mars rover Curiosity.

The rover touched down near Mount Sharp in August with the purpose of uncovering evidence of a habitable environment, and in December Curiosity found traces of clay, water molecules and organic compounds.

Determining the origin of these elements and how they relate to Mount Sharp will be a focus for Curiosity in the coming months.

But the mound itself was likely never under water, though a body of water could have existed in the moat around the base of Mount Sharp, said study co-author Kevin Lewis, a Princeton associate research scholar in geosciences and a participating scientist on the Curiosity rover mission, Mars Science Laboratory.

The quest to determine whether Mars could have at one time supported life might be better directed elsewhere, he said.