Gale Crater Mars Map

A shaded and colorized topographic map of gale crater, mars, based on publicly released high resolution stereo camera (hrsc) data. The landing site is marked by a yellow cross at the top center of this image. Scroll and pan around this map to see curiosity’s latest location and traverse path through gale crater since landing on mars in august, 2012.

Greens are phyllosilicates (clays), blue and magenta are sulfates, red is olivine, and orange is mixed sulfates and clays. Gale crater on mars, where nasa curiosity rover is set to land, belongs to a family of large, very old craters shown here on this elevation map. Greens are phyllosilicates (clays), blue and magenta are sulfates, red is olivine, and orange is mixed sulfates and clays.

It’s a wetter time in mars’ history.

Gale crater is an impact basin ∼155 km in diameter that formed ∼3.8 ga before present during the late noachian epoch (thomson et al., 2011) near the. 6, 2012 edt) and the location where curiosity collected its first drill. It has one of the lowest elevations among this family. Home to the curiosity rover since august of 2012, gale crater is 154km in diameter (96 miles).