Curiosity rover spots field of giant honeycomb on Mars – but no giant space bees

NASA has shared new snaps captured by its Curiosity rover that show a large “field of honeycomb textures” on Mars. Here’s the best of the images Curiosity captured. It shows the honeycomb field, each element of which is four to eight centimeters across. Cracked brown ground with darker patches and a small piece of machinery at …

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

I have seen similar weathering patterns on cliffs a few hundred metres inland from the Victorian Surf Coast, not far from my place. It is fascinating what wind, water and sand can achieve with enough thousands/millions of years.

[jake]

I've seen similar in the Mojave, and in southern Utah, and in a couple other areas in the desert South West, where wind-blown sand is the primary cause of erosion.

[Lon24]

None spotted around Horsell Common though. Was H.G.Wells or the cylinders misguided?

https://www.villagematters.co.uk/sunbury-matters/sunbury-matters-articles/2019/12/the-war-of-the-worlds

[RegGuy1]

14 years!

It landed in 2012? Wow. And I still get confused between it and Spirit and Opportunity. Since the many years when we only knew about the surface from the two Viking Landers the US have been roaming on the Martian surface forever, something we just take for granted, yet it is such an incredible achievement. I know there are no pubs there, but have a beer.

BTW, a typo: "Posisbly cracked mud".

[Anonymous Coward]

> pretty sure the patterns are the result of mud drying and cracking

Looks more like the results of the Oxfordshire pothole repair team...

[lglethal]

Nahh, it''s missing the obligatory Witches Hat. And it's only been there a few million years. Pothole Repair Teams need longer than that...

[AndrueC]

We have assessed your desert as a level 3 issue. We aim to resolve all such issues within 28 million years.

[Spherical Cow]

Just get the rover to draw a CDC* around the pothole, that will make it a high priority repair.

*again

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if it'd found a Martian equivalent of the Giant's Causeway, that would have been interesting ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Very McCool

[Doctor Syntax]

That's what I was thinking. They're the tops of basalt columns.

The production is quite similar of course. A liquid cooling, solidifying and shrinking as it does so.

[Anonymous Coward]

35 kilometres in 14 years?

Who knew Mars had an M25?

[Bebu sa Ware]

Curious

I assumed they were surface features but looking closely at the chunks of "rock" along the diaginal running bottom left — top right, in the first image the hexagonal structures look three dimensional like honeycomb or waffles.

Leaving giant Martian killer bees and alien spawn aside, it's not incredibly obvious how these structures might have formed. One mechanism I can imagine is that closely packed bubbles (of mud?) stacked like layers of bubble rafts which formed more hexagonal cells when the inflating gas (fluid) slowly cooled reducing the pressure inside the bubbles. Even that uneducated guess raises a lot more questions than it answers.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Curious

I'd suggest a mass of mud shrinking, forming columns from lateral shrinkage and horizontal cracks from the vertical shrinkage followed by an intrusion of more mud, which sets to become harder, into the cracks,

[Paul Herber]

The redness of Mars is honey! Dried out honey!

Almost time for Icelandic Martian Honey Week.

[Joe Gurman]

Suggesting an other than minor correction

"NASA typically extends missions for as long as its robots gather enough data to justify the cost of operating them."

Ought to read, "NASA typically extends missions for as long as its robots gather enough new science to justify the cost of operating them."

NASA convenes "senior reviews" of operating missions every three years, with the principal criterion for extensions being the scientific productivity of the mission over the last three-year period. Obviously, there's reluctance to turn off any operating mission (cf. the Voyagers), but data volume along won't swing it, particularly in an epoch where any spare bucks go to Buck Rogers.

[IGotOut]

Sorry...

..but until they can PROVE, it wasn't giant bees, then that's what I'm going with. None of the "It might be due to...." guesswork.