Mars rover Curiosity will study in this week’s “live” Martian dunes – RIA Novosti

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© Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona

© Photo: NASA / JPL -Caltech / MSSS

MOSCOW, November 17 – RIA Novosti . Mars rover Curiosity this week will go to unusual dark and gradually moving dunes on the surface of Mars, whose study will help scientists understand how they occur and why waves of sand on those dunes much deeper than in the world, the press service of NASA.

“The research of these dunes do not just tell us about how the dunes now appear and move on the surface of Mars, but also talk about how their material is compressed into the past, into the sandstone that makes up many rocks of Mars” – said Bethany Elman (Bethany Ehlmann) of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (USA).

Now the rover is located just a few meters from the large sand dunes, which scientists call “dunes Bagnolda” in honor of the engineer Ralph Bagnolda who revealed the secret birth of the dunes in the world. These deposits of sand, as explained planetary scientists are “live” – ​​with images of probes orbiting Mars indicate that they are moving away from Curiosity at about one meter of the Earth’s year.

The presence of “live sand” does Mars with the Earth, the only inhabitants of the solar system, where there are sand hills, which move not only by the wind, but also the force of gravity, forcing the grains roll down the steep slope of the dunes .

Now Curiosity only photographs dunes and measures the speed and direction of winds, but when he approached the edge of the area dunes Bagnolda that planetary scientists called “Dune-1″, it will take a sample of sand and to study their chemical composition. In addition, the rover will travel through the sand dunes to push it and give scientists the opportunity to study its structure.

© Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona

According to Elman, scientists are particularly interested in what “sorts” if the wind particles of sand dunes in their chemical composition. In addition, planetary scientists, NASA will try to find out why the orbital images show the extremely motley chemical composition of dunes at different points of their slopes.

This data is, as the representative of NASA, the need to understand exactly what role Water plays in the formation of sandstone on Mars that scientists are today considered one of the traces of the existence of liquid water on its surface.

In principle, there is another planet in the solar system, where there are dunes – Titan, moon of Saturn whose sand Ridge consist not of silica sand and granules of frozen methane. Titan’s dunes are formed and move a completely different way – they instantly appear in the most powerful storms in its atmosphere rather than gradually brings wind on Earth. Therefore, Titan’s dunes are not an analogue of their earthly “cousins” in this respect.