Curiosity's home and a mountain of Martian history.
Gale is a ~154 km crater with a towering 5-km mountain at its center — Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons). Each of its layers is a page of Martian history, which is why NASA landed the Curiosity rover here in 2012.
Claim your plot here →Gale was chosen for one reason: Mount Sharp, the 5-km mound of layered sediment at its heart. Those layers built up over millions of years, recording how Mars's climate and water changed — a readable stack of history.
Since 2012 Curiosity has been slowly climbing it, discovering clay minerals, sulfur, ancient stream beds and complex organic molecules — proof that Gale once held a long-lasting lake with conditions that could have supported microbial life.