Curiosity's traverse into new terrain

This image maps the traverse of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity within Gale Crater from "Bradbury Landing" to its current location at "Yellowknife Bay," with an inset documenting a change in the ground's temperature during the rover's travels.

Between December 7 and December 8, Curiosity breached a terrain boundary, crossing into lighter-toned rocks which correspond to high thermal inertia values observed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The green dashed line marks the boundary between the terrain types.

The inset graphs the range in ground temperature recorded each day by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station on board Curiosity. The arrival onto the lighter-toned terrain corresponds with an abrupt shift in the range of daily ground temperatures marking the rover's arrival at exposed and stratified bedrock.

December 8 marked the arrival at the Shaler Unit where scientists saw cross-bedding that is evidence of water flows. December 11 marked the arrival into the area called "Yellowknife Bay," where sulfate-filled veins and concretions were discovered in the Sheepbed Unit, along with much finer-grained sediments. The thin dashed line is based on previous Odyssey thermal inertia mapping in 2005 by Robin Fergason and co-authors.