Author name: Linda C. Kah

The surface of Mars has been sculpted by flowing water and shaped by wind. During the first two years of its exploration of Gale Crater, the Mars Science Laboratory mission’s Curiosity rover has recorded abundant geologic evidence that water once existed on Mars both within the subsurface and, as least episodically, flowed on the land surface. And now, as Curiosity presses onward toward Mount Sharp, the complexity of the Martian surface is becoming increasingly apparent. In this paper, we review the nature of the surface materials and their stories, as seen through the eyes of Curiosity.