Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
NASA has a robot car on Mars. Its name is Curiosity. Curiosity looks at rocks and dirt on Mars.
Curiosity found something new. It is a big field of small shapes. The shapes look like a honeycomb. A honeycomb has many small six-sided rooms, like a bee's home.
The place is called Valle Grande. It is next to a mountain called Mount Sharp. On June 19 and 20, 2026, Curiosity took many pictures. The pictures made one big circle picture.
Each small shape is very small. It is only 4 to 8 centimeters wide. That is about the size of your hand. Scientists do not know exactly how the shapes formed. It is still a mystery.
- rover
- a robot vehicle that moves and explores a place, like Mars
- honeycomb
- a pattern of small six-sided shapes, like in a bee's home
- shape
- the form or outline of something
- field
- a big open area of land
- picture
- an image, like a photo
- mountain
- a very tall hill
- mystery
- something people do not understand yet
- ground
- the surface of the land, the dirt under your feet
Level 2 — Elementary
NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars since 2012. Recently, it found something surprising: a huge field of ground cracks shaped like a honeycomb.
The rover found the shapes in a valley called Valle Grande. This valley sits on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside a large crater called Gale Crater.
On June 19 and 20, 2026, Curiosity took a 360-degree panorama, a picture that shows the whole area around it in a circle. In the panorama, the honeycomb pattern stretched in every direction, as far as the rover could see.
Each small shape, called a polygon, measures only about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 8 centimeters) across. Curiosity had seen small patches of these shapes before, but never a field this large. The pattern even wraps around a nearby rock formation nicknamed "Miraflores," which stands about 20 feet tall.
- explore
- to travel through a place to learn more about it
- crack
- a thin line where something has split apart
- valley
- low land between hills or mountains
- slope
- a surface that is higher on one side than the other
- crater
- a large bowl-shaped hole, often from an impact
- panorama
- a wide picture showing everything around a place
- polygon
- a shape with several straight sides
- formation
- a rock or land shape made naturally over time
Level 3 — Intermediate
For nearly a decade and a half, NASA's Curiosity rover has been steadily climbing the foothills of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall mountain rising from the floor of Gale Crater, gathering evidence about Mars's watery past. Its latest find has caught scientists' attention for its sheer scale.
In a valley named Valle Grande, on Mount Sharp's lower slopes, Curiosity discovered an enormous field of polygonal ground fractures, cracks that split the surface into small, honeycomb-like sections. Using images captured over two Martian days, June 19 and 20, 2026 (mission sols 4,930 and 4,931), the rover assembled a 360-degree panorama revealing the pattern extending in every direction as far as the cameras could resolve.
While Curiosity has previously photographed isolated patches of similar polygons, each individual shape only about 1.5 to 3 inches across, researchers say nothing on this scale has been documented before. The fractures are so pervasive that they wrap around the base and sides of a nearby butte nicknamed "Miraflores," a roughly 20-foot rock formation capped with sand.
Explaining the origin of the Valle Grande field is proving tricky. Scientists point to several known mechanisms for polygonal cracking on Mars: some ancient examples clearly formed as drying mud cracked apart, while others may result from repeated cycles of warming and cooling, or from compression that forced water out of buried sediment. Which process, or combination of processes, produced this particular field remains an open question.
- foothills
- lower hills at the base of a larger mountain
- fracture
- a break or crack in a solid surface
- pervasive
- spreading widely throughout a place
- butte
- an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top
- mechanism
- a process by which something happens
- compression
- the act of pressing or squeezing something into less space
- sediment
- material, such as sand or mud, that settles at the bottom of water or land
- terrain
- the physical features of an area of land
Level 4 — Advanced
Nearly fourteen years into its mission, NASA's Curiosity rover continues to yield discoveries that reframe scientists' understanding of Gale Crater's geologic history. Its latest find, an expansive field of polygonal ground fractures in a valley called Valle Grande on the lower flanks of Mount Sharp, stands out not for novelty of form but for sheer, unprecedented extent.
Assembled from imagery captured on consecutive Martian sols, June 19 and 20, 2026 (sols 4,930 and 4,931), Curiosity's 360-degree panorama documents a honeycomb-textured terrain that recedes toward the horizon in every direction the cameras could resolve. Individual polygons are diminutive, each measuring roughly 1.5 to 3 inches across, yet their collective footprint dwarfs anything the rover has previously encountered; prior sightings amounted to isolated, modest patches rather than a contiguous field of this magnitude.
The fractures' reach is striking: they extend across the flat valley floor and ascend the flanks of a nearby butte informally dubbed "Miraflores," a sand-capped formation roughly 20 feet high, suggesting the process that shaped them operated across varied topography rather than being confined to level ground.
Attributing a definitive origin to the Valle Grande field, however, eludes researchers for now. Precedent on Mars offers several plausible mechanisms rather than a single answer: some documented polygon fields are unambiguous desiccation cracks, the signature of mud drying and contracting; others are attributed to thermal contraction cycles driven by repeated freeze-thaw temperature swings; still others are thought to arise from compressional stress that expelled water from once-buried sediment as it consolidated. Which mechanism, or combination thereof, sculpted this particular expanse remains, for now, an open question that underscores how much of Mount Sharp's layered history is still being pieced together, decade by patient decade, as Curiosity ascends.
- flank
- the side of a mountain, hill, or other landform
- diminutive
- very small in size
- contiguous
- connected or touching throughout, without gaps
- topography
- the arrangement of physical features of an area of land
- desiccation
- the process of becoming thoroughly dried out
- contraction
- the process of becoming smaller, often from cooling or drying
- consolidate
- to become firmer or more solid, often through pressure over time
- elude
- to escape or avoid being achieved or understood
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