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BACK TO SCHOOL: Rover's Alluvial Fan Like Those Near Redlands-Loma Linda

'It's the same geological process that produced the fans in both places,' David Beaty, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Directorate, told Redlands-Loma Linda Patch.

The Curiosity rover, more than 150 million miles distant from Earth, is situated on an alluvial fan similar to those in Southern California, the chief scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Directorate said Wednesday.

"It's the same geological process that produced the fans in both places," David Beaty of Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab told Redlands-Loma Linda Patch.

"Alluvial fans are formed where you have a cliff or a mountain, and erosion causes rocks and the soil to come down, wash down where there's water, which is what happens here on Earth," Beaty said in a phone interview, speaking from La Cañada Flintridge.

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"On Mars we get the same sort of process, just by gravity," Beaty said. "We know there was water in the past. We don't see water today, at least no evidence of it."

The unmanned rover on Mars late Sunday Aug. 5 in Gale Crater, an ideal location for its mission to investigate the red planet's geologic past and search for building blocks of life on the large mountain at the center of the crater, Mount Sharp.

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The alluvial fans near Redlands and Loma Linda are giant, sloping mounds of deposits that have poured out of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountain ranges over thousands of years.

Some fans are steeper near the mouths of canyons from which they came, but the slopes ease far out on the fans to become nearly flat. Consider the giant alluvial fan below the mouth of Lytle Creek Canyon, where most of Rialto and Fontana are situated.

By the time you reach Interstate 10, the fan's slope toward the mountains is barely noticeable.

The same alluvial fan structure, a nearly flat surface in one location, within reach of a large mountain form, is what made the Curiosity landing site in Gale Crater so appealing, Beaty said.

"There's the rim of the crater and there's this mountain in the middle," Beaty said. "And both of them are shedding debris and it comes down and coalesces from two different directions, and that creates a flat place at the bottom."

It is too early for NASA scientists to be sure of the source of the fan where the rover is situated, Beaty said. The source of the fan's deposits could be the walls of Gale Crater, it could be the large mountain at the center of the crater, Mount Sharp, or it could be both.

Regardless of the source, the landing site is "way out on the fan," with a gradual grade to climb to reach Mount Sharp.

Caltech JPL Mars Program astrobiologist Abigail Allwood said Curiosity's location on the fan is an unexpected bonus because some of the sedimentary evidence the craft will investigate on Mount Sharp is already close at hand.

"The team are excited to learn the rover actually landed on part of the fan so they have immediate access to sedimentary rocks that were probably laid down in the presence of water," Allwood said in an email Wednesday.

"That water may have only been at the surface for a short time so may not have been sustained for long enough for life to gain a foothold," Allwood said.

"But even if the environment could not be shown to be habitable, I think it would be highly significant to know that there was surface runoff in relatively recent times," Allwood said. "I have no idea of the age of the fan, but it has to be one of the younger features in the area."

Gale Crater is 96 miles in diameter, according to NASA. Mount Sharp rises about 3 miles above the crater floor.

The slopes of Mount Sharp are gentle enough for Curiosity to climb, but during the primary mission of one Martian year, equivalent to 98 weeks on Earth, the rover likely will not go beyond "some particularly intriguing layers near the base," according to NASA.

Aside from alluvial fans, Redlands and Loma Linda residents can claim at least one other local connection to the Curiosity rover and its mission.

University of Redlands professor of astronomy and physics Tyler Nordgren helped design a key detail that will help the Mars explorer transmit more accurate images from the red planet's surface: a sundial to help calibrate exposures. To read more about Nordgren's work on Curiosity, .

For more information about Curiosity and the Mars Science Laboratory, visit www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl and follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter.

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