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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4627-4628: A Ridge Stop in the Boxworks
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this close-up view of the rock target “Bococo” at the intersection of several boxwork ridges, showing bright millimeter-scale nodules likely to be calcium sulfate. Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, which uses an onboard focusing process to merge multiple images of the same target, acquired at different focus positions, to bring all (or, as many as possible) features into focus in a single image. Curiosity performed the merge on Aug. 10, 2025 — Sol 4625, or Martian day 4,625 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 08:00:39 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Monday Aug. 11, 2025
Written by Lucy Lim, Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
On the Curiosity team, we’re continuing our exploration of the boxwork-forming region in Gale Crater. A successful 25-meter drive (about 82 feet) brought the rover from the “peace sign” ridge intersection to a new ridge site. Several imaging investigations were pursued in today’s plan, including Mastcam observations of a potential incipient hollow (“Laguna Miniques”), and of a number of troughs to examine how fractures transition from bedrock to regolith.
With six wheels on the ground, Curiosity was also ready to deploy the rover arm for some contact science. APXS and MAHLI measurements were planned to explore the local bedrock at two points with a brushed (DRT) measurement (“Santa Catalina”) and a non-DRT measurement (“Puerto Teresa”). A third MAHLI observation will be co-targeted with one of the LIBS geochemical measurements on a light-toned block, “Palma Seca.” Because we’re in nominal sols for this plan, we were able to plan a second targeted LIBS activity to measure the composition of a high-relief feature on another block, “Yavari” before the drive.
The auto-targeted LIBS (AEGIS) that executed post-drive on sol 4626 had fallen on a bedrock target and will be documented in high resolution via Mastcam imaging.
Two long-distance imaging mosaics were planned for the ChemCam remote imager (RMI): one on a potential scarp and lens in sediments exposed on the “Mishe Mokwa” butte in the strata above the rover’s current position, and the second on an east-facing boxwork ridge with apparently exposed cross-bedding that may be related to the previously explored “Volcán Peña Blanca” ridge.
As usual, the modern Martian environment will also be observed with camera measurements of the atmospheric opacity, a Navcam movie to watch for dust lifting, and the usual REMS and DAN passive monitoring of the temperature, humidity, and neutron flux at the rover’s location.
The next drive is planned to bring us to a spot in a hollow where we hope to plan contact science on the erosionally recessive hollow bedrock in addition to imaging with a good view of the rock layers exposed in the wall of another prominent ridge.
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4624-4626: A Busy Weekend at the Boxwork
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this image of the three intersecting ridges in front of it this weekend that make a sort of “peace sign” shape. Curiosity acquired the image using its Left Navigation Camera on Aug. 8, 2025 — Sol 4623, or Martian day 4,623 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 06:20:38 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Alex Innanen, Atmospheric Scientist at York University
Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 8, 2025
We continue to progress through the boxwork structures, arriving today at the “peace sign” ridges we were aiming for in our last drive. We’re spending the first two sols of the weekend at this location, learning everything we can about the boxwork ridges all around us. Then we’re driving further along and spending our third sol at our next location doing a bit more untargeted science.
Our first sol includes three contact science targets, “Palmira,” “Casicasi,” and “Bococo,” which both MAHLI and APXS will be checking out nice and close. ChemCam is also using its LIBS laser to check out Bococo, and taking a mosaic of some more distant boxwork ridges. Not to be left out, Mastcam is taking a mosaic of the intersecting peace-sign-shaped ridges, which have been given the name “Ayopaya,” as well as another mosaic of the edge of one of the nearby ridges. The environmental science group (ENV) is also taking a dust-devil movie and a surpahorizon cloud movie.
On our second sol, ChemCam has another LIBS observation of “Britania.” Mastcam has some more mosaics, today looking back at our wheel tracks to see what we might have turned up on our drive, as well as out to the more distant ridges. We also have another cloud movie coinciding with imaging from above by the CaSSIS camera on board the Trace Gas Orbiter, trying to spot the same clouds from above and below. After our drive Curiosity gets to take a nice long snooze before waking up early for our typical weekend morning ENV block, which includes three different cloud observations (it’s still the cloudy season, after all!) and two observations to look at dust in the crater and in the sky above. Later on this sol ChemCam will use AEGIS to autonomously pick a LIBS target, we’ll have a 360-degree survey to try to catch dust devils. Finally, we’re setting our sights back on the clouds, using cloud shadows on Mount Sharp to estimate cloud altitudes.
Want to read more posts from the Curiosity team?
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By European Space Agency
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
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This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Full illustration and caption shown below. Credits:
Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
Visible only from Earth’s Southern hemisphere, it’s made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.
Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The results have been accepted in a series of two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
If confirmed, the planet would be the closest to Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. However, because the planet candidate is a gas giant, scientists say it would not support life as we know it.
“With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own. Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy center, co-first author on the new papers. “Webb was designed and optimized to find the most distant galaxies in the universe. The operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute had to come up with a custom observing sequence just for this target, and their extra effort paid off spectacularly.”
Image A: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (DSS, Hubble, Webb)
This image shows the Alpha Centauri star system from several different ground- and space-based observatories: the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky, and the closest Sun-like star to Earth. The ground-based image from DSS shows the triple system as a single source of light, while Hubble resolves the two Sun-like stars in the system, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. The image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which uses a coronagraphic mask to block the bright glare from Alpha Centauri A, reveals a potential planet orbiting the star. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, DSS, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) Several rounds of meticulously planned observations by Webb, careful analysis by the research team, and extensive computer modeling helped determine that the source seen in Webb’s image is likely to be a planet, and not a background object (like a galaxy), foreground object (a passing asteroid), or other detector or image artifact.
The first observations of the system took place in August 2024, using the coronagraphic mask aboard MIRI to block Alpha Centauri A’s light. While extra brightness from the nearby companion star Alpha Centauri B complicated the analysis, the team was able to subtract out the light from both stars to reveal an object over 10,000 times fainter than Alpha Centauri A, separated from the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth.
Image B: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (Webb MIRI Image Detail)
This three-panel image captures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observational search for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A. The initial image shows the bright glare of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and the middle panel then shows the system with a coronagraphic mask placed over Alpha Centauri A to block its bright glare. However, the way the light bends around the edges of the coronagraph creates ripples of light in the surrounding space. The telescope’s optics (its mirrors and support structures) cause some light to interfere with itself, producing circular and spoke-like patterns. These complex light patterns, along with light from the nearby Alpha Centauri B, make it incredibly difficult to spot faint planets. In the panel at the right, astronomers have subtracted the known patterns (using reference images and algorithms) to clean up the image and reveal faint sources like the candidate planet. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) While the initial detection was exciting, the research team needed more data to come to a firm conclusion. However, additional observations of the system in February 2025 and April 2025 (using Director’s Discretionary Time) did not reveal any objects like the one identified in August 2024.
“We are faced with the case of a disappearing planet! To investigate this mystery, we used computer models to simulate millions of potential orbits, incorporating the knowledge gained when we saw the planet, as well as when we did not,” said PhD student Aniket Sanghi of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Sanghi is a co-first author on the two papers covering the team’s research.
In these simulations, the team took into account both a 2019 sighting of the potential exoplanet candidate by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the new data from Webb, and considered orbits that would be gravitationally stable in the presence of Alpha Centauri B, meaning the planet wouldn’t get flung out of the system.
Researchers say a non-detection in the second and third round of observations with Webb isn’t surprising.
“We found that in half of the possible orbits simulated, the planet moved too close to the star and wouldn’t have been visible to Webb in both February and April 2025,” said Sanghi.
Image C: Alpha Centauri A Planet Candidate (Artist’s Concept)
This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. In this concept, Alpha Centauri A is depicted at the upper left of the planet, while the other Sun-like star in the system, Alpha Centauri B, is at the upper right. Our Sun is shown as a small dot of light between those two stars. Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.
“If confirmed, the potential planet seen in the Webb image of Alpha Centauri A would mark a new milestone for exoplanet imaging efforts,” Sanghi says. “Of all the directly imaged planets, this would be the closest to its star seen so far. It’s also the most similar in temperature and age to the giant planets in our solar system, and nearest to our home, Earth,” he says. “Its very existence in a system of two closely separated stars would challenge our understanding of how planets form, survive, and evolve in chaotic environments.”
If confirmed by additional observations, the team’s results could transform the future of exoplanet science.
“This would become a touchstone object for exoplanet science, with multiple opportunities for detailed characterization by Webb and other observatories,” said Beichman.
For example, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027 and potentially as early as fall 2026, is equipped with dedicated hardware that will test new technologies to observe binary systems like Alpha Centauri in search of other worlds. Roman’s visible light data would complement Webb’s infrared observations, yielding unique insights on the size and reflectivity of the planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/webb
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
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Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4622-4623: Kicking Off (Earth) Year 14 With an Investigation of Veins
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, using its Left Navigation Camera, caught the shadow of the rover’s mast looking ahead to new terrain as the mission started its 14th Earth year on Mars. Curiosity acquired this image on Aug. 6, 2025 — Sol 4621, or Martian day 4,621 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 06:24:09 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Abigail Fraeman, Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025.
Today was a very special day for Curiosity as the rover celebrated the start of a 14th year on Mars. Curiosity is currently exploring the mysterious boxwork formations. On Monday, the rover positioned itself at the side of one of the ridges, where the team had spotted tantalizing hints of a complex network of razor-thin veins that may give insight into what is holding the ridges up, compared to the surrounding hollows.
In this plan, the team will use the instruments on Curiosity’s arm and mast to investigate the geometry and composition of these veins to learn more about them. APXS and MAHLI will both observe “Repechón,” a loose block with dark-toned, mottled material exposed on top, as well as “Lago Poopó,” a bright, relatively clean vein network. MAHLI will also collect a side view of “Repechón.” ChemCam will use its laser to analyze two targets, “Vicguna,” a protruding vein edge with nodular texture, and “Ibare,” which has some exposed light-toned veins. Outside of the vein investigation, ChemCam’s telescopic RMI camera will observe layering in a nearby butte and the Mishe Mokwa feature, while Mastcam will take mosaics on “Cachiniba,” a broken block, “Yapacani,” the side of another large boxwork ridge, and “Llullaillaco,” a faraway feature that we imaged from a slightly different location in a previous plan. Additional environmental monitoring observations will round out the plan, followed by a straight-line drive to the east, to an area where several large boxwork ridges intersect that the team has been informally calling “the peace sign” because of its shape.
I usually get nostalgic around landing anniversaries, or “landiversaries,” and this year, I found myself looking back through pictures of landing night. One of my favorites shows me standing next to science team member Kirsten Siebach right after we received the first images from Curiosity. The two of us have the biggest, most excited grins on our faces. We were both graduate students at the time, and both of us were writing thesis chapters analyzing orbital data over regions we hoped to explore with Curiosity one day. I was studying a layer in Mount Sharp that contained hematite, and the team named this feature “Vera Rubin ridge” when Curiosity reached it in 2017. Kirsten, who is now a professor at Rice University, was focused on the boxwork structures, pondering how they formed and hypothesizing what they might tell us about the history of Martian habitability when we reached them.
Thirteen years later, I had another big grin on my face today, as I listened to Kirsten and our incredible science team members excitedly discussing Curiosity’s new images of these same boxwork structures. I was also filled with gratitude for the thousands of people it took to get us to this moment. It was the absolute best way to spend a landiversary.
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