Gale Crater with Water (IMAGE)

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Gale Crater with Water

Caption

This illustration depicts a lake of water partially filling Mars' Gale Crater. It would have been filled by runoff from snow melting on the crater's northern rim. Evidence of ancient streams, deltas, and lakes that NASA's Curiosity rover has found in the patterns of sedimentary deposits in Gale suggests the crater held a lake like this one more than three billion years ago, filling and drying in multiple cycles over tens of millions of years.

Credit

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

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