NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures a Stunning Mars Sunrise Over Wind-Carved Yardangs

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured a panorama of sunrise illuminating distant wind-carved features known as yardangs on August 11, 2026—the mission’s 4,982nd Martian day, or sol. Scientists are studying the landscape to better understand how the Yardang Formation on Mars developed.

Curiosity Studies Mars’ Yardang Formation

Figure A shows a close-up of one of the distant yardangs.

Since 2014, Curiosity has been climbing Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer (3-mile) high mountain inside Gale Crater. Mount Sharp consists of multiple layers that overlap one another. In the area where the rover is currently climbing along the mountain’s shoulder, the sequence of layers ends at the Yardang Formation.

Mount Sharp may have begun eroding before the Yardang Formation formed. If so, gaps could exist in the record of Mars’ climate history that Curiosity has been studying in the mountain’s layers. Scientists are not yet certain how the formation developed. One possibility is that it consists of volcanic ash, similar to deposits found near Mars’ equator.

A Six-Image Mars Panorama

Curiosity’s Mastcam captured the sunrise panorama using six individual images. The images were transmitted to Earth and stitched together to create the final view. Unlike most Mastcam images, this panorama was processed without the usual white-balance adjustment, an artistic choice that preserves the scene’s early-morning appearance.

About NASA’s Curiosity Mission

Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.

Learn more about Curiosity and its exploration of Mars below.