As nasa's curiosity rover ascended the martian valley named valle grande back in june:ike textures. 'We've seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity's eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,' said the mission's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

According to Iraqi News Agency, small patches of these geometric shapes, known as polygonal fractures, have been spotted several times before, but nothing at the scale discovered in Valle Grande. In a 360-degree panorama captured by the rover on June 19-20, the polygonal shapes spread in all directions as far as the rover can see. They even wrap around the sides of a nearby butte nicknamed 'Miraflores,' which stands 20 feet tall (6 meters) and is topped with a thick cap of sand.

The mission's team measured the shapes and chemistry of these formations carefully. They are hopeful that the data will provide clues about how these features formed. A variety of processes can contribute to these honeycomb textures. Some of the polygons the rover has spotted in the past clearly formed as mud cracks. Other possibilities include cycles of warm and cold temperatures or compression that squeezed water out of the sediment when the surface was buried.