While it’s still unclear if anyone was swimming in it, NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence to suggest an ancient lake sat in the foothills of a Martian mountain.
The rover observed rockets etched with the ripples of waves, and astronomers are sharing that it is a sign of a lake having sat in the area, NASA shared in a statement.
Currently, the rover is making its way through the “sulfate-bearing unit,” an area of Mars where researchers previously thought they would only find evidence of a minuscule amount of water, as it was believed the rocks in the area were formed while the planet was drying, according to NASA.
However, Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared that they instead found the clearest evidence yet that water once inhabited the planet.
“This is the best evidence of water and waves that we’ve seen in the entire mission,” Vasavada said in a statement. “We climbed through thousands of feet of lake deposits and never saw evidence like this — and now we found it in a place we expected to be dry.”
The area of mars was first discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and is known for containing deposits of salty minerals beneath Mount Sharp, a mountain reaching 18,000 feet into the Martian sky.
Astronomers and scientists have wanted to monitor the sulfate-bearing unit for some time, as they think it could offer answers for why the planet is how it is today.
The new images from NASA’s Curiosity show the erosion on the planet’s rocks that they believe is evidence of a shallow lake.
“Billions of years ago, waves on the surface of a shallow lake stirred up sediment at the lake bottom, over time creating rippled textures left in rock,” according to a NASA news release.
NASA attempted to have Curiosity extract samples from some of the rocks. However, they were too hard for the rover’s drill to get through, the space agency shared. Still, NASA hopes that some softer spots will be observed so samples can be collected.
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