Gale Crater Report

Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory because of its unique and diverse geologic features (Le Deit et al., 2013). At a press conference in July of 2011, it was announced that the Gale Crater was chosen out of many possible landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory (NASA, 2011). The objective of the mission is to explore a location on Mars and determine if it may have once been habitable to life. Perhaps one of the biggest necessities for life is liquid water, and evidence for its presence was an important factor when choosing the landing site. During the press conference, it was explained by MSL mission manager Mike Watkins that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was used to view, examinem and map out locations

The crater’s Northern rim and wall have large amount of erosion. Gravel and sand from this wall were carried in streams toward the south in the crater. (Grotzinger et. al, 2015). The direction of these southward, downward sloping deposits are toward the rise of Mount Sharp. The larger grained materials deposited earlier, and the finer grained materials deposited farther southward, creating delta deposits. Beyond these deltas, very fine-grained, mud deposits give evidence for a lake. The lake basin was present before Mount Sharp existed, and continued to exist while the base of the mountain was being formed (Grotzinger et. al, 2015). These sedimentary deposits continued and began to fill the crater. These layers of sediment extended to a very high elevation above the floor of the crater, possibly completely filling the crater (Vasavada et al., 2015). Because Mount Sharp is higher than the northern crater wall and could not have been in the lake, some, later, unknown process must have deposited the upper layers of sediments on the mountain (Vasavada et al., 2015). While the lower portions of the mound are assumed to be of lacustrine origin, the top areas are thought to possibly by aeolian in origin (Day & Kocurek, 2015). Over time, these sediments were eroded away, leaving only what is left of Mount