PASADENA, USA, Oct. 7, 2026 - NASA's Curiosity rover has photographed bright, steep peaks that belong to a rock formation different from any it has encountered before, said Ashwin Vasavada, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.^[1] The peaks are wind-carved crags known as yardangs,^[2] and the layer is unlike anything the rover has seen so far.^[3] Curiosity, which landed in Gale Crater in 2012,^[4] has recently climbed about 0.6 miles in elevation, the most any rover has climbed on Mars.^[5] Scientists plan for it to reach the base of the yardangs by 2027.^[6] Space Nugget. Yardangs are long, streamlined ridges sculpted by wind. They form where steady, sand-laden winds scour away softer rock and leave harder rock standing, a process seen in deserts on Earth as well as on Mars. Because they line up with the winds that shaped them, yardangs act as a fossil record of a planet's past wind directions.