Strong winds have affected Mars' topography and the layered mountains are an outcome of these storms only. A recent study has stated that the wind on Mars has been shaping the red planet's landscapes for billions of years and is still continuing to do that.
According to NASA, the research was done using a NASA orbiter and a rover. It reveals the effect on different scales, grand to tiny, on the strange structures present on landscapes in the Gale Crater. The observations by NASA's Mars Renaissance Orbiter have shown long-term patterns and rates of wind erosion that help explain the formation of a layered mountain named "Mount Sharp" in the middle of a crater.
The observations have determined that wind blowing in the Gale crater today is different from when it used to blow from the north, removing the materials that once filled up the gap between Mount Sharp and the crater rim. Now, Mount Sharp itself shapes the direction of the wind. The atmosphere on Mars is a hundred times thinner than that of earth, so it results in winds exerting much less force than the earth's winds. Time is considered to be the prime factor for shaping the landscapes of Mars via dominant winds.
According to Mail Online, earlier campaign on Mars saw crescent-shaped dunes on the surface of Mars, whereas the second one is about a group of ribbon-shaped linear dunes, in which the sand is transported along the ribbon pathway, oscillating the ribbon back and forth from time to time. The mission will further assess the movement of the sand particles at the linear dunes, examine the shapes of the ripple on the surface of the dunes and determine the composition of the material the dune is made up of. The rover engineers are analyzing the samples collected during the drill feed mechanism, as "Curiosity" focuses on the sand dunes.
Another cause for the formation of eroded landscapes on the face of Mars is the powerful dust storms. Most of them are smaller, dissipating within a few days. The bigger ones, though, last for more than three weeks. Researchers classified the storms into three types, A, B and C. During the Type A storm, sunlight on the dust warms the atmosphere, resulting into speeding up the winds, which lifts more dust. The B and C storms follow after the Type A storm, respectively from the south and north of the planet.
"Curiosity" will be collecting more sample materials from a rock. This will be helpful in understanding the chemical composition of the rocks and how they come into being. It will also be helpful to understand how scientists should fare with the whimsical Mars climate.
