New data from NASA’s Curiosity rover hints at history of water on Mars
The information raises new questions about how long life might have been able to survive on Mars billions of years ago before the planet became a cold, dry desert.
FILE: See the Mars surface from the Curiosity rover
NASA’s Curiosity rover captured a clear panorama of Mars' Gale Crater in August.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured images of hilly terrain on Mars, described by scientists as resembling spiderwebs from orbit, which provide clues about the planet’s watery past.
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According to NASA, for approximately six months, the rover has been exploring a region of the Big Red Planet full of geological formations called boxwork - low ridges that rise about one to two meters (three to six feet) above the ground, with sandy depressions between them.
This image shows a panorama of boxwork formations on Mars captured by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on Sept. 26, 2025 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS / NASA)
These ridges stretch across the surface for miles and suggest that water once flowed underground here, later than scientists had thought.
This raises new questions about how long life might have been able to survive on Mars billions of years ago before the planet became a cold, dry desert.
Scientists believe the boxwork shapes formed when groundwater once flowed through fractures in the bedrock, leaving behind minerals that strengthened the areas which became ridges, while other parts without mineral reinforcement were eventually hollowed out by the wind.
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When viewed from space, the boxwork looks like giant spiderwebs.
This image shows bumpy nodules formed by minerals left behind as groundwater was drying out on Mars billions of years ago captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover Aug. 21, 2025 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS / NASA)
"Until Curiosity arrived at this region, however, no one could be sure what these formations looked like up close, and there were even more questions about how they were made," NASA said.
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Boxwork ridges also exist on Earth, but they are usually only a few centimeters tall and are found in caves or dry, sandy areas.
On Mars, the Curiosity team wanted to study similar formations up close and collect more data.
It posed a real challenge for the rover drivers, who had to carefully send instructions to Curiosity—a vehicle the size of an SUV, weighing nearly a ton (899 kilograms)—so it could drive over ridges barely wider than the rover itself.
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Tina Seeger of Rice University in Houston, one of the mission scientists leading the boxwork investigation, said in a NASA article that seeing boxwork this far up on the mountain suggests the groundwater table had to be fairly high.
FILE: Stitched together from 28 images, this view from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover was captured after the rover ascended the steep slope of a geologic feature called "Greenheugh Pediment." In the distance at the top of the image is the floor of Gale Crater, which is near a region called Aeolis Dorsa that researchers believe was once a massive ocean. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
"And that means the water needed for sustaining life could have lasted much longer than we thought looking from orbit," Seeger said.
In 2014, scientists proposed that these lines might be central fractures, where groundwater seeped through rock cracks and allowed minerals to concentrate.
"Investigating the ridges up close, Curiosity found that these lines are in fact fractures," NASA said, supporting the idea about past groundwater activity on Mars.