The stone garden left by water
Processed image. A mosaic of 28 Mastcam right-eye exposures from 18 March 2015, sol 929, shows Garden City’s raised veins. Publisher white balancing approximates Earth daylight; this assembled view supplies outcrop context for the MAHLI close-ups.
NASA/JPL image-use policy · credited mission imagery, resized to WebP
· Original image source · Image licenceBright and dark mineral veins cross one another, preserving a sequence of events inside a Martian outcrop.
- World
- Mars
- Case date or period
- Image archive · 2015
Look closer
At Garden City, Curiosity photographed resistant mineral veins standing above the surrounding rock. Some dark veins are cut by lighter material, preserving a sequence of events inside the rock.
Follow the evidence
Move between the overall outcrop and the close detail. Cross-cutting relationships can reveal which deposit came later, even when no photograph records the original fluid moving through the fractures.
Similar colours, different fluids
ChemCam’s Garden City measurements showed why appearance alone is insufficient. Two thick dark veins had elevated iron, but one was rich in calcium with fluorine, while the other was enriched in magnesium. The mission team interpreted those chemical differences as deposits from different fluids. Laser spectra could distinguish neighbouring materials that a colour photograph might group together, adding chemical evidence to the order inferred from intersecting veins.
Fractures reopened more than once
Kronyak and colleagues’ 2015 research abstract connects vein textures with fluid emplacement. Light material cuts older dark deposits and encloses fragments of rock and dark vein material, suggesting that fluids reused and disrupted existing pathways. Elsewhere, crystal patterns perpendicular to fracture walls suggest gentler growth. These are interpretations of preserved fabrics, rather than measured ancient flow pressures; the network records multiple episodes instead of one uniformly filled crack.
Sources & further reading
- Prominent Veins at Garden City on Mount Sharp, Mars — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Garden City Vein Complex on Lower Mount Sharp, Mars — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Injection of Light Material into an Older Dark Vein — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Thick, Dark Veins at Garden City, Mars — NASA / JPL
- Garden City Vein Complex, Gale Crater, Mars: Implications for Late Diagenetic Fluid Flow — Kronyak and colleagues — AGU Fall Meeting 2015 / research abstract
- Crystal texture inside a pale vein — NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
- Fragments carried into a later vein — NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS