NASA's Curiosity Mars rover landed inside the Gale Crater on the Red Planet in August 2012.

During the final stages of its descent, however, the rover's rocket landing platform called the sky crane blasted the dusty surface of Mars causing darkened divots when the rover separated and flew out of the explosive landing.

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After Curiosity's dramatic landing, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on board camera, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), has been keeping track and observing this landing zone, also called as Bradbury Landing.

This crash site where the sky crane hit displays dark marks on the surface caused by rockets that slowed the rover's entry into the Martian atmosphere.

Curiosity's grand landing apparently disturbed the regolith covering the Martian surface. Scientists initially expected surface scorch marks to fade away slowly with the damaged surface returning to its natural state.

This hasn't been the case. HiRISE images revealed the four components of Curiosity's landing faded in an inconsistent manner, revealing a mysterious Martian surface characteristic.

Curiosity created dark blast zone patterns as Mars' bright red dust was blown away and disturbed by the landing, according to Ingrid Daubar who is a HiRISE team scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

She says the team expected these blast zones to fade out as winds on the Red Planet have moved dust around after the years of landing. But this phenomenon has been very surprising as the rate of change of the blast zones doesn't appear consistent. 

NASA will launch InSight, its next mission to Mars, in 2016 and observations from this spacecraft will be pivotal to that mission. When the InSight lander touches down on the surface of Mars, it will deploy a probe that will be hammered into the ground to measure the heat seeping through the Martian crust.

Planetary scientists are now seeking to better understand any sort of phenomenon on the surface of Mars, especially this darkening. They believe that darker surfaces absorb more sunlight while brighter surfaces reflect less light and emit less heat.

Next year's InSight probe will unravel these mysteries as heat on the surface can also be a sign that life on Mars could exist or existed.

TagsMars Rover Curiosity's Landing Zone Scars have Mysteriously Darkened, Mars, NASA, Curiosity Rover, life on mars, mars rover curiosity landing blast zones scars darkened