On August 11, 2026, NASA’s Curiosity rover captured a panorama of the sunrise illuminating geological formations called yardangs, sculpted by wind, on Mars.
These yardangs are located on the flank of Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer-high mountain that Curiosity has been exploring since 2014. This layer of yardangs marks the end of a series of strata deposited one over another and could indicate a period of erosion that created a gap in the planet’s climatic record.
Scientists do not yet know precisely how this layer formed; one hypothesis suggests it is a deposit of volcanic ash, similar to those observed near the Martian equator.
The panorama was created by stitching together six images taken by Curiosity’s Mastcam camera, without white balance correction to preserve the natural appearance of dawn.
The Curiosity rover was built and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which leads the mission as part of the U.S. space agency’s Mars exploration program.