A second block with the same strange texture

Curiosity has just finished drilling at a site called “Basque Lakes” and has driven back to a spot a few meters from a block named “Chiu Chiu.” That block was not a good candidate for drilling, but the one just beyond it looked better, so it became the drive target. Close-up pictures taken after the drive showed it was, in the words of planetary scientist Lucy Lim, “jam-packed” with the same “disc- and needle-” shaped lumps seen on “Chiu Chiu.” The science team approved drilling and named the spot “Nazca.”

The leading idea is that these shapes are “crystal forms,” meaning the outlines minerals take as they grow, much as salt crystals do in a kitchen experiment. Their fairly large size gives clues to the temperature when they grew and to how much salt and fluid was available. There is a catch: the minerals now in the rock may not be the original ones. Sometimes a mineral is replaced later by another, which keeps the old shape but has a different composition. These replacements are called pseudomorphs.

Three-dimensional close-ups and a laser that digs deeper

Before the drill preload test, which checks how the drill presses on the rock, the team planned several special observations. The rover’s hand-lens camera, MAHLI, will take five overlapping images at slightly different angles, called a Quantitative Relief Model, so scientists can build a detailed 3D model of the crystal forms. MAHLI will also double the number of focus steps in its sharpest imaging, adding frames and resolution.

The ChemCam instrument fires a laser at rock and analyzes the glowing plasma to learn its composition (the technique is called LIBS). Each day’s observation normally uses 150 shots, spread over five points at 30 shots each. This time all 150 shots go onto one spot on a nearby crystal-form-rich target named “Toucan.” Because each shot vaporizes a tiny amount of rock, NASA says the profile should reach about five times deeper than a normal 30-shot point. Scientists can then check whether the inside of a crystal form differs from its surface, which has been exposed to the modern Martian environment.

LIBS, the rover’s brush (DRT) and its X-ray spectrometer (APXS) will also examine the “Nazca” surface before the preload test. A third LIBS observation goes to “Condor,” a nearby block with finely layered rock.

Why a deeper laser profile is worth the trouble

The analysis here is about science payoff. Surface readings on Mars can mislead, because the outer skin of a rock is altered by air, dust and radiation, and a drill sample is the only way to reach unaltered material. Curiosity’s drill campaigns are slow and few: the rover has been working in Gale Crater, where it is now autumn in Mars Year 39, and the Basque Lakes sample was followed within a week by this next campaign. A laser depth profile costs far less than a drill hole and could show, before committing to one, whether the crystal forms differ inside. A difference would hint at replacement by other minerals or at changes since the shapes formed.

NASA’s previous Curiosity update, for sols 5036-5042, adds that the Basque Lakes drill campaign included an extra gas chromatograph mass spectrometer experiment by the SAM instrument team, added after the team reviewed lab results from the previous week. A sol is a Martian day, about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Those results and the crystal-form data from “Nazca” should help show how salty fluids once moved through the rock layers of Mount Sharp.

Phobos at night, as twilight cloud season starts

Curiosity is also watching the sky. Twilight clouds, high-altitude clouds lit by the low Sun at sunset, return each autumn. In the previous blog post, NASA said most clouds over Gale Crater are too thin to see with Curiosity’s cameras, but twilight clouds show up in its raw navigation camera images.

This week’s plan adds nighttime imaging of Phobos, the larger and brighter of Mars’ two moons. When Phobos is full, sunlight reflecting off it scatters in the atmosphere, which lets scientists estimate the size of particles in the clouds, and at later hours of the night than solar observations allow. The team expects to be measuring high-altitude carbon dioxide clouds. Phobos is also the target of JAXA’s planned sample-return mission, covered in our report on NASA’s role in the Martian Moons eXploration mission.

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A kilometer up Mount Sharp

Curiosity launched on Nov. 26, 2011, and landed in Gale Crater in August 2012. It has been climbing the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, a mountain about 5 kilometers (3 miles) tall, since 2014. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the 1-kilometer mark was passed on Sol 4,996 of the mission, a sol being one Martian day. Nine days later, on Sept. 5, 2026, the rover imaged the crater floor below in a 95-frame panorama from Mastcam, the camera pair on the rover’s mast.

A few days after the milestone, on Aug. 30, 2026, the mission marked its 5,000th Martian day with a two-time-of-day navigation camera panorama taken from a sandy ridge nicknamed Chocolatal. NASA’s mission page lists Curiosity as an active mission and shows it was last updated on Sept. 29, 2026.

A sea of polygons in Valle Grande

As Curiosity began climbing a valley nicknamed Valle Grande, it photographed a field of honeycomb-like polygonal fractures. NASA’s July 29, 2026 release says the polygons measure roughly 4 to 8 centimeters (1.5 to 3 inches) across and extend as far as the rover can see in a 360-degree view taken on June 19 and 20, 2026 (sols 4,930 and 4,931). They also wrap around the sides of Miraflores, a sand-capped butte about 6 meters (20 feet) tall.

The mission had seen small patches of such shapes before, but never on this scale. Some earlier polygons clearly formed as mud cracks. NASA lists other possible causes, including repeated warming and cooling, and compression that squeezed water out of buried sediment. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said: “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away.”

Wind-carved cliffs and an open question

On Oct. 6, 2026, NASA released a six-image Mastcam panorama of the yardang layer, a set of wind-carved crags in the northwestern part of Mount Sharp. Curiosity took it at 8:30 a.m. local Mars time on Aug. 11, 2026 (Sol 4,982). The layer runs about 10 miles (16 kilometers) across.

Scientists do not yet know what formed it. One hypothesis is ash from ancient volcanic eruptions. According to NASA, the rover will spend the next year or so driving through sulfate- and carbonate-rich layers, and the agency hopes to reach the base of the yardangs in 2027 and use the robotic arm to collect data there.

The boxwork region, which the 2025 version of this story described, has also produced results. NASA’s mission page lists a feature on the rover’s close-up view of those ridges, which it says it had explored for about six months. It also describes a drilled sample from a rock called Atacama on April 25, 2026, which stuck to the drill and was freed in early May 2026.

Doing more with a fading power source

Curiosity is powered by a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which turns heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. As the plutonium decays, recharging the batteries takes longer and less energy is left for science each day.

In its August 2025 report, JPL said that after tests begun in 2021, the rover can safely relay data to an orbiter while driving, moving its arm or taking images. Running tasks together shortens each day’s active time, which reduces how long heaters and instruments stay on. The rover can also go to sleep early if it finishes its work ahead of the padded schedule. JPL’s Reidar Larsen described the shift this way: “It’s as if our teenage rover is maturing, and we’re trusting it to take on more responsibility.”

JPL gave no figures for total power use or generator output, and the savings per activity are small, on the order of 10 to 20 minutes. The same report said the wheels, which have been punctured by rocks, still have years of travel left. It put the distance driven at 22 miles (35 kilometers) at the time, and a wear-reducing driving algorithm is in use.

What the climb still has to answer

The record so far shows that ancient Gale Crater had water, chemistry and nutrients able to support microbial life, according to NASA, including carbon-based molecules that are precursors to RNA and DNA. Scientists cannot yet say whether those molecules came from biological or geological processes. NASA also reports a February 2026 paper in the journal Astrobiology that argues non-biologic processes do not fully explain the organics found on Mars.

The elevation gain gives the team a longer record of the layers laid down as Mars dried. A May 2026 NASA study of 20 Curiosity samples found that differences in hematite crystallite size at different elevations may serve as a new marker of ancient climate. What formed the yardang layer, and whether it can be sampled in 2027, will be the next test of how far a power-limited rover can still go.

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