PIA21262: Mars Rover's Mastcam View of Possible Mud Cracks 
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NOTE (by uploader,  <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan" title="User:Drbogdan">Drbogdan</a> (<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Drbogdan" title="User talk:Drbogdan"><span class="signature-talk">talk</span></a>) 21:32, 18 January 2017 (UTC)): 
</p><p>Original image cropped to 1884x975/0.498mb (from 3704x1230/3.350mb) - via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PaintShop_Pro" class="extiw" title="w:PaintShop Pro">JASC Paint Shop Pro v6.02</a>.
</p><p><br><a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21262">http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21262</a>
</p><p>This view of a Martian rock slab called "Old Soaker," which has a network of cracks that may have originated in drying mud, comes from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.
</p><p>The location is within an exposure of Murray formation mudstone on lower Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. Mud cracks would be evidence of a time more than 3 billion years ago when dry intervals interrupted wetter periods that supported lakes in the area. Curiosity has found evidence of ancient lakes in older, lower-lying rock layers and also in younger mudstone that is above Old Soaker.
</p><p>Several images from Mastcam's left-eye camera are combined into this mosaic view. They were taken on Dec. 20, 2016, during the 1,555th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.
</p><p>The Old Soaker slab is about 4 feet (1.2 meters) long. Figure 1 includes a scale bar of 30 centimeters (12 inches). The scene is presented with a color adjustment that approximates white balancing, to resemble how the rocks and sand would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.
</p><p>Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates MAHLI. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built the project's Curiosity rover.
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For more information about Curiosity, visit <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.nasa.gov/msl">http://www.nasa.gov/msl</a> and <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl">http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl</a>.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA21262_fig1.jpg">http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA21262_fig1.jpg</a>