NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered a remarkable landscape on Mars unlike anything it has seen before.
While exploring a valley known as “Valle Grande,” the rover found an enormous field covered with small honeycomb-shaped patterns stretching as far as its cameras could see.
Curiosity captured the stunning scene in a 360-degree panorama taken on June 19 and 20, 2026. The unusual patterns, known as polygonal fractures, measure about 4 to 8 centimeters (1.5 to 3 inches) across.
Although the rover has spotted small patches of these shapes in the past, scientists have never seen them covering such a large area.
The patterns even extend up the sides of a nearby 6-meter-tall (20-foot-tall) butte called “Miraflores,” which is topped by a thick layer of sand. The discovery has excited researchers because it may reveal new clues about Mars’ ancient climate and geological history.
“We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said Ashwin Vasavada, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
He said the team is carefully studying the shapes and chemical makeup of the rocks in the hope of understanding how they formed.
Scientists think some polygonal patterns on Mars were created when wet mud dried and cracked, much like mud does on Earth after a lake or puddle dries up. However, mud cracking is not the only possible explanation. Similar honeycomb-like patterns can also form through repeated freezing and thawing, or when water is squeezed out of buried sediments over long periods of time.
Because there are several possible ways these features could have formed, researchers need more information before they can determine what happened in Valle Grande billions of years ago.
The discovery is just the latest in Curiosity’s long list of achievements. The rover landed inside Gale Crater on August 5, 2012, and has spent nearly 14 years exploring the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, a mountain that rises about 5 kilometers (3 miles) above the surrounding landscape.
Over the years, Curiosity has uncovered sulfur crystals, iron meteorites, unusual rock formations and many other geological surprises. More importantly, it has provided strong evidence that ancient Mars once had rivers, lakes and a much wetter environment than the cold, dry planet we see today.
The rover has also detected carbon-based organic molecules that scientists believe are the basic chemical building blocks needed for life. These molecules are similar to compounds involved in RNA and DNA, which carry genetic information in living organisms.
Scientists cannot yet tell whether these molecules were produced by living organisms or by natural geological processes, but either possibility shows that ancient Mars had the right ingredients to support microbial life.
Each new discovery helps scientists better understand what Mars was like billions of years ago.
The newly discovered honeycomb landscape adds another piece to that puzzle and could provide valuable clues about the planet’s changing environment and its potential to have once supported life.
