(FOX NEWS) – NASA’s Curiosity rover is getting a firsthand look
at a region on Mars previously only seen from orbit that features
a "boxwork" pattern, along with evidence of ancient waterways,
including rivers, lakes and maybe an ocean.

New images and data from the Mars rover have already raised
questions about how the red planet’s surface was changing
billions of years ago.

Scientists are still unable, though, to answer why the planet’s
water eventually dried up and converted the surface into a chilly
desert.

Curiosity rover is in an area called Gale Crater, and evidence has
shown that when it was formed, water was percolating under the
surface.

NASA said the rover had found evidence of groundwater in the
crater when it encountered crisscrossing low ridges, some of
which were only a few inches tall and were described by
geologists as being arranged in a boxwork pattern.

After more than a decade in space, Pioneer 10, the world’s
first outer-planetary probe, left the outer limits of the known
solar system by crossing the orbit of Neptune, the system’s
then farthest planet.

The following day, it radioed back its first scientific data on
interstellar space.

Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe, was launched
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar
system’s largest planet.

MIKE GRACIA

Richard Benjamin Speck
(December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991)

Ranger 7, an unmanned U.S. lunar probe, took the first close-up
images of the moon—4,308 in total—before it impacts with the
lunar surface northwest of the Sea of Clouds. The images were
1,000 times as clear as anything ever seen through earth-bound telescopes.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had attempted a similar mission earlier in the year—Ranger 6—but
the probe’s cameras had failed as it descended to the lunar
surface.

Ranger 7, launched from Earth on July 28, successfully activated
its cameras 17 minutes, or 1,300 miles, before impact and began
beaming the images back to NASA’s receiving station in
California.