Aside from a blue sunset, NASA's Curiosity Rover was able to discover an ancient valley that has been broken down and refilled in Mars.

On May 8, the same day, NASA revealed an unexpected from the Red Planet: a blue sunset, the U.S. agency said that Curiosity took a detour in one of its recent missions and found the hillside site of the valley.

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The ancient valley was carved out and refilled, a phenomenon that has not been previously discovered by the NASA team.

Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that the material, which filled the valley looked like sand. It is unclear to the scientists of the project whether it was transported by wind or water; when the mudstone was formed; and the timeline of when the valley was broken down and refilled.  

"It's exciting to see this on Mars for the first time. Features like this on Earth capture evidence of change. What in the environment changed to go from depositing one kind of sediment, to eroding it away in a valley, to then depositing a different kind of sediment? It's a fascinating puzzle that Mars has left for us," Vasavada added.

It an be noted that China Topix has reported that Curiosity was able to record the Martian horizon in a blue hue on the sunset of April 15, in between dust storms.

Through the Curiosity's Mast Camera, it was found that the dust remained in Mars' atmosphere, after the dust storms, where just the right size for blue light to penetrate the atmosphere "slightly more efficiently," Mark Lemmon, a member of the Curiosity team from the Texas A&M University College Station.

In announcing the discovery, NASA, through the Curiosity Rover's official Twitter account quoted T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: "Let us go then, you and I; When the evening is spread out against the sky."

Earlier in April, NASA said that harvesting water from Mars is a possibility.

Since 2012, Curiosity has been on Mars, exploring the Red planet and studying its rock formations and atmosphere. 

TagsScience, NASA, Curiosity Rover, Mars, mars exploration