NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to uncover unusual polygon-shaped features resembling “honeycombs” on the Red Planet.
The latest images depicting these unique geometric formations, known as polygonal fractures, were revealed this week by NASA, showing the rugged Martian terrain around the Vallee Grande area covered in the unusual-looking features.
Polygons as Far as the Eye Can See
In Curiosity’s photos captured by the rover between June 19th and 20th, a sprawling web of the Martian honeycombs could be seen spreading across the terrain in all directions.
Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the mission’s project scientist likened the discovery to a “sea” of Martian polygons that he said took the Curiosity team’s breath away.
“We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes,” Vasavada said in a statement. “We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.”
Ideas on “Honeycomb” Formation
According to Vasavada and his colleagues, some of these unique structures appear to have formed from mud cracks, although the polygonal shape appears to occur under a range of different conditions on the Martian terrain.
Among the reasons for their appearance, scientists have determined that temperature changes can cause moisture to be squeezed out of sediment layers, producing the characteristic structured appearance.
Long before Mars became the cold, arid world we see in NASA imagery today, lakes and streams used to exist along the base of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-high mountain that Curiosity has been slowly climbing and studying since 2014. Since beginning its trek, the rover has uncovered chemical traces of the planet’s wetter past, including carbon-based organic molecules considered the precursors to RNA and DNA.
While researchers remain uncertain about whether these compounds are the result of biological processes or simply natural geological conditions, their discovery adds to the mounting evidence for an ancient Mars that once would have held the chemical requirements for life to have once existed there.
Ongoing Discoveries
Curiosity has discovered these unique polygon-shaped features on several occasions in the past, although NASA mission scientists say they’ve never seen as many in a single location.
One of the recent similar discoveries took the Curiosity team by surprise, as images of the region obtained by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) had not indicated anything unusual about the terrain. Once Curiosity arrived, however, a web of unusual polygon features was revealed in the surrounding terrain.
In another instance in 2025, several areas resembling waffle or honeycomb patterns were spotted by Curiosity’s Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) on May 1, 2025.
Additional details about Curiosity’s ongoing studies of the Martian landscape can be found on NASA’s official Curiosity page.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.