Fourteen years after touching down in Gale Crater, Curiosity is still finding surface details that stop its science team mid-plan. In mid-August 2026, during sols 4988 through 4994, the rover paused among layered rocks on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp and photographed a scatter of broad, shallow pits cut into bedrock. One of them, captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on the end of the robotic arm on sol 4989, measures about a centimeter across and, from certain angles, looks uncomfortably like a small footprint.
