accumulated

Washington: Examining initial samples of rocks collected by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, scientists have found a wide diversity of minerals in the lower-most layers of Mount Sharp mountain, suggesting that conditions changed in the water environments on the Red Planet over time. Curiosity landed near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater in August 2012. It reached the base of the mountain in 2014. Layers of rocks at the base of Mount Sharp accumulated as sediment within ancient lakes around 3.5 billion years ago. Orbital infrared spectroscopy had shown that the mountain's lower-most layers have variations in minerals. "We went to Gale Crater to…