Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS; Compilation & Processing : Kenneth Kremer, Marco Di Lorenzo. Explanation: What is this unusual mound on Mars? NASA’s Curiosity rover rolling across Mars has come across a group of these mounds that NASA has labelled Murray Buttes. 
Pictured is a recently assembled mosaic image of one of the last of the buttes passed by Curiosity on its way up Mt. Sharp — but also one of the most visually spectacular. Ancient water-deposited layers in relatively dense — but now dried-out and crumbling — windblown sandstone tops the 15-meter tall structure. The rim of Gale crater is visible in the distance.
Curiosity continues to accumulate clues about how Mars changed from a planet with areas wet and hospitable to microbial life to the dry, barren, rusted landscape seen today.
By: apod.nasa.gov
