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NASA’s Curiosity rover found a ‘sea of polygons’ on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover found a ‘sea of polygons’ on Mars
The Verge Thursday 30 July 2026, 17:20 UTC By Stevie Bonifield 1 min read
Key Points

The latest discovery from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is a field of honeycomb-shaped polygons covering a Martian valley called Valle Grande. As Gizmodo reports, Curiosity has snapped pictures of the unusual terrain texture before, called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5 to 3 inches wide, but NASA says it's previously only found them in small patches, "nothing on the scale discovered in Valle Grande." Curiosity captured a 360-degree panorama of the "sea of polygons" on June 19th and 20th...

The latest discovery from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is a field of honeycomb-shaped polygons covering a Martian valley called Valle Grande. As Gizmodo reports, Curiosity has snapped pictures of the unusual terrain texture before, called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5 to 3 inches wide, but NASA says it's previously only found them in small patches, "nothing on the scale discovered in Valle Grande."

Curiosity captured a 360-degree panorama of the "sea of polygons" on June 19th and 20th (Martian sols 4,930 and 4,931) that shows the texture spreading out in all directions. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada says the Curiosity team "measur …

Read the full story at The Verge.

NASA (ORG) Curiosity (ORG) Mars (LOCATION) Curiosity Mars (ORG) Martian (ORG) Valle Grande (LOCATION) Gizmodo (ORG) Ashwin Vasavada (PERSON)
Originally published by The Verge Read original →

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