Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2016

PLANETOLOGY JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016 47 Just as in terrestrial des- erts, also on Mars there are areas covered with sand dunes, which are slowly transformed by the wind action. The Mars Curiosity rover has reached one of these dunes and has begun analyzing it to see if the wind is able to sort out sand grains according to their size and weight, per- forming thereby a miner- alogical differentiation. its the I n the second half of 2015, Pluto has sto- len the limelight from all the other plan- ets, and for a while we have forgotten that on Mars, the Curiosity rover continues relentlessly its slow march at the foot of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater. After its land- ing in 2012 in a flat area of the crater, the rover began its long journey towards the higher formations rising at the centre of the structure. Along the way, it repeatedly dug and drilled the ground, examining soil samples in its internal laboratory and by means of external instruments. Curiosity has then reached the base of Mount Sharp in September 2014, continuing its explora- tion of the red planet without any particu- lar problems. In November 2015, bordering