Curiosity’s ChemCam Views Historic River Channel Peace Vallis

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its ChemCam instrument to seize Peace Vallis, an historical river channel descending Gale Crater’s rim, on Sept. 1, 2025 (the 4,647th Martian day, or sol, of the mission). The channel was about 19 miles (30 kilometers) from Curiosity because it explores the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain.

The darkish options scattered simply left of heart throughout the channel are rocky outcrops. While Curiosity has taken photos of Peace Vallis previously, that is the primary time particulars like these have been seen inside it. Water and sediment are believed to have flowed down Peace Vallis into Gale Crater billions of years in the past, making a fan of sediment throughout the crater ground. Studying the crater’s watery previous is a part of Curiosity’s total mission to know the place and the way effectively the traditional Martian panorama may have supported microbial life, if any ever fashioned there.

ChemCam is provided with the Remote Micro Imager, or RMI, a black-and-white digital camera that can be utilized like a small telescope to see distant options, making a round “spyglass” picture. Ten RMI photographs have been stitched collectively on Earth right into a mosaic to create the panorama seen right here.

Curiosity was constructed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as a part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French nationwide area company CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), the University of Toulouse, and the French nationwide analysis company (CNRS).

For extra about Curiosity, go to:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity.