For the first time ever, NASA's Curiosity rover is headed towards the active, dark sand dunes on Mars, offering unprecedented views for the first time.

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Right now, Curiosity is travelling to the Bagnold Dunes that are located in the northwestern foothills of Mount Sharp. These dark, sandy dunes will be explored and investigated by the rover in the next few days, according to NASA officials.

These are Martian dunes are massive, as Curiosity will study one of them, measuring as wide as one football field and as high as a two story building. Apart from this colossal feature, the dunes are also active, where Martian orbiters reveal evidence of movement, as the dunes travel at three feet every year.

According to Bethany Ehlmann from the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this investigation will not only reveal dune activity on Mars but also, provide a better understanding of sandstone layers of the dunes which used to be rocks a long time ago.

Opportunity and Curiosity rovers already explored some sandy swales some time ago however, these are the first active dunes that Curiosity will investigate, featuring slopes where sand are actively sliding down apart from Earth's. The rover will then collect samples using its onboard scientific suite of instruments, where it will scrape some sand using a wheel to compare changes between the surface and subsurface. 

According to Nathan Bridges from the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, these dunes are different from the ones on Earth, as they possess a different texture. Bridges describes that the ripples on the Martian sand dunes are larger than the top of the dunes on Earth, and this has been a mystery. He adds, there are models that are based on lower air pressure and it also requires higher wind speeds to get particles to move.

Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars' massive Gale Crater where it landed there on August 2012. The robotic rover's mission is to determine if Mars can support microbial life where the rover gathered evidence that the Red Planet can, from the Gale Crater's lake and stream system that used to exist in Martian past.

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