Curiosity has found a vast sea of Martian polygons that may reveal how water and climate once reshaped the Red Planet. NASA’s Curiosity rover has encountered an enormous field of honeycomb-shaped fractures while climbing through a Martian valley known as “Valle Grande.” Each geometric feature measures roughly 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) [...]
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Curiosity stumbled onto something we've never seen before.
Explorer for Artemis Geology, Lunar, and Earth — a NASA satellite program to study surface biology and geology on Earth, with technologies that could support future missions to the Moon and Mars.
NASA’s EAGLE program — Explorer for Artemis Geology, Lunar, and Earth — will be a series of satellite missions studying surface properties using technologies for Earth observation that will also benefit future missions to the Moon and Mars, where they could identify critical resources and safe landing sites.
The satellites making up the first two EAGLE missions will study biology and geology on Earth’s surface to support agriculture, disaster response, and other needs. Each mission will carry a different instrument with capabilities that complement each other. The first mission (EAGLE-VSWIR) is scheduled to take flight in 2028.
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EAGLE-VSWIR (Visible to Shortwave Infrared) will observe the Earth’s surface every 16 days with a high-resolution imaging spectrometer, which measures light reflected from the planet’s surface, separating wavelengths across the visual and into the infrared spectrum. The patterns created by light being reflected or absorbed across this spectral range act like fingerprints, letting scientists identify the composition of the surface.
A similar instrument, NASA’s EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation), has been monitoring Earth from the International Space Station since July 2022, characterizing the surface mineral composition of Earth’s arid lands, monitoring ecosystem status, and tracking health and safety hazards — such as methane leaks and acid mine drainage — among other applications.
EAGLE-VSWIR will have 25 times more capability than EMIT has today. This technological leap will allow scientists to map surface deposits of critical and rare-earth minerals, strengthen food security, and aid wildfire prevention and recovery. It can also highlight environmental hazards such as oil spills or landslide risks, and monitor water quality and availability.
The EAGLE-TIR mission will provide Thermal InfraRed (TIR) imagery when it launches two to three years after EAGLE-VSWIR, measuring energy emitted from the surface and producing data that scientists can use to map temperature, composition, and critical mineral deposits. On Earth that would let researchers monitor wildfires and volcanic activity, track drought and water use by crops, study urban heat islands, observe the rates that snow or ice accumulates or melts, and better understand Earth’s resilient ecosystems.
EAGLE-TIR follows on from ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station), which has been observing Earth from the International Space Station since 2018. ECOSTRESS was designed to study how different ecosystems respond to drought and water stress, and the data has provided a vital understanding of how plants’ water use changes throughout the day. Since ECOSTRESS also measures emitted energy in the thermal infrared, its surface-temperature products have also been used for urban planning and wildfire monitoring.
Further innovation and lessons learned from ECOSTRESS has led to EAGLE-TIR, which will carry a multi-band thermal radiometer. EAGLE-TIR’s great strength compared to existing missions is that it provides detailed imagery of the entire globe every two days, day and night, at multiple wavelengths not available from other instruments.
By advancing vital techniques for measuring our planet’s surface composition, resources, and hazards, the EAGLE program addresses critical needs in Earth observation, with technologies that can also transfer to planetary exploration, where they’ll serve as pathfinders for future missions to the Moon and Mars.
NASA unveiled the EAGLE program as one part of its “Ignition” event on March 24, 2026, when it announced a wide-ranging series of transformative agencywide initiatives. With EAGLE (the Explorer for Artemis Geology, Lunar, and Earth missions), NASA will deploy breakthrough hyperspectral images across Earth with later missions anticipated for the Moon and Mars in rapid succession. On Earth they’ll identify critical minerals for national security, enable precision agriculture, and support disaster response. On Earth and at Mars they will locate critical minerals and resources such as ice for propellants, rare-earth elements for technology, and construction materials for habitats.
EMIT (Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation) measures the mineral composition of Earth’s dust source regions, to help scientists understand how they heat or cool our planet.
Learn More About EMITECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) is accurately measuring the temperature of plants on Earth.
Learn More About ECOSTRESSYour home. Our Mission. And the one planet that NASA studies more than any other.
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This is the first evidence that the mineral garnet may have been formed within the crust of Mars itself, heralding clues to the planet’s complex history.A vast field of mesmerizing polygons has left Mars scientists enthralled.
Don’t be mistaken: NASA didn’t send a robot across the solar system so its eggheads could get a rundown in basic geometry. Instead, the Curiosity rover stumbled upon a stretch of the Martian valley called “Valle Grande” where the landscape is defined by honeycomb-shaped patterns ranging two to four inches in diameter.
These so-called “polygonal fractures” have been spotted elsewhere on the Red Planet, but never texturing an entire landscape at such a scale.
“We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” project scientist Ashwin Vasavada at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. “We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.”
Curiosity has delivered a new 360-degree panorama from Mars. “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said the mission’s project scientist. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/G7sV6Xafkq
— NASA Mars (@NASAMars) July 29, 2026
The Curiosity rover stumbled on the polygon field while ascending the foothills of a three-mile-high mountain called Mount Sharp, where it’s been roaming since 2014. Captured with its Mastcam instrument, a panorama composed of 340 images taken back on June 19 show the hexagons dominating a huge stretch of the landscape.
On Mars, polygonal textures are generally mud cracks. What created them hints at the planet’s fascinating geological history: the honeycombs can form as a result of water drying up and causing sediments to shrink, or they can be carved out by extreme temperature swings. By studying these features, scientists hope to piece together how flowing water once helped shape the Red Planet’s surface.
More on Mars: NASA Rover Finds “Complex Organic Matter” on Mars
The post NASA Mars Rover Discovers Field of Mesmerizing Polygons appeared first on Futurism.
A new look at more than two decades’ worth of archival data from NASA’s Spirit mission suggests that the Martian soil may hold iron-bearing minerals -- hematite and altered magnetite -- that were too faint for scientists to detect in real time during the mission.
The post Hidden Clues in Spirit Rover Data Suggest Mars Once Had Far More Water than Scientists Realized appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
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