{"id":242704,"date":"2026-08-14T05:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T10:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/curiosity-mars-rover-discovers-field-of-honeycomb-textures"},"modified":"2026-08-14T05:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T10:03:22","slug":"curiosity-mars-rover-discovers-field-of-honeycomb-textures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/curiosity-mars-rover-discovers-field-of-honeycomb-textures","title":{"rendered":"Curiosity Mars rover discovers field of honeycomb textures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/curiosity-mars-rover-discovers-field-of-honeycomb-textures.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover recently began climbing a Martian valley nicknamed \u201cValle Grande,\u201d it sent back images that were a familiar sight to mission scientists: honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5\u20133 inches (4\u20138 centimeters) across. The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande.<\/p>\n<p>In a 360-degree panorama that the rover captured on June 19 and 20, the 4,930th and 4,931st Martian days, or sols, of the mission, the polygonal shapes spread in all directions for as far as the rover can see. They even wrap around the sides of a nearby butte nicknamed \u201cMiraflores,\u201d which stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall and is topped with a thick cap of sand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity\u2019s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,\u201d said the mission\u2019s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. \u201cWe measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover recently began climbing a Martian valley nicknamed \u201cValle Grande,\u201d it sent back images that were a familiar sight to mission scientists: honeycomb-like textures called polygonal fractures, each about 1.5\u20133 inches (4\u20138 centimeters) across. The mission has spotted small patches of these geometric shapes several times before, but nothing at the scale [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}