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title: Curiosity Discovers Water Shed on Mars | TIME
description: Curiosity science team member William Dietrich explores the relationship between river fans found in California’s Death Valley on Earth and similar fans in Gale Crater on Mars
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# Curiosity Discovers Water Shed on Mars

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ztM0mq5l.m3u8" -->
## Video: Curiosity Discovers Water Shed on Mars

[Watch (HLS stream): Curiosity Discovers Water Shed on Mars](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ztM0mq5l.m3u8) (2:51)

![Curiosity Discovers Water Shed on Mars](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ztM0mq5l/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2012-09-28. Curiosity science team member William Dietrich explores the relationship between river fans found in California’s Death Valley on Earth and similar fans in Gale Crater on Mars_


---

Jul 27, 2023 3:28 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[Mars Curiosity Rover: How We'll Know It's Safe](/video/7gFtn04y/)

### Mars Curiosity Rover: How We'll Know It's Safe

[7 Minutes of Terror Over Mars: The Curiosity Rover](/video/KBIgtGHi/)

### 7 Minutes of Terror Over Mars: The Curiosity Rover

[Curiosity Rover Blasts Off to Mars](/video/ayE139XX/)

### Curiosity Rover Blasts Off to Mars

---


## Transcript

In this video, we're going to take a look at fans in Death Valley and explore how they form. And then travel back to Gill Crater and explore the relationship between the fan and the landing site as well So we will begin with a flight into Death Valley. We've outlined it in white. The boundaries of six alluvial fans that we fly into and see outlined. Four facing us and two at our feet. The ones facing us are steeper and come out of a steep canyon. Note the fan shape. The lateral boundaries spread like a fan that we use to cool ourselves. Now we fly into the headwaters of one canyon. And see how a channel spills out of that canyon.

And the sediment and water that comes rushing out. Travels to the left and travels to the right, depositing as it does so, shifting, shifting, shifting. Sediment depositing, the river moving over depositing, the river moving over. Now we're crossing to the other fan, that was at our feet and now we're going to settle down and look back at the two fans. The one, the steep one toward us, the gentle one at our feet. This is Gale Crater and we're flying in toward the Curiosity landing site. On the image, you'll see a red line delineating the boundary of a alluvial fan and the blue delineates fossil channels.

In the foreground now, you'll see. A canyon that's some 18 kilometers long, 30 meters deep, 600 meters wide. That sediment was eroded and deposited into a fan- shaped deposit by a series of channels. Here we count about 24 separate fossil channels that played a role in building the fan that we're flying over. In the horizon you see the X that marks the position of the Curiosity Rover. This fan was built by erosion, then, of sediment in the canyon wall that was brought out and spread across the crater floor. This is now looking from the Curiosity back to fan. And you can see that it would be about a two to four mile hike or three to six kilometer walk from the nearest channel to where the Curiosity Rover is sitting.

Looking at the entire system, then, we see that it's a watershed. And water has cut a deep canyon, spread sediment across the crater wall. And then, deposited sediment, perhaps as far as the Curiosity Rover itself, where we've now recognized water transported gravel.

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