At the end of January 2014 (Sols 528–540), the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity approached the valley opening known as Dingo Gap. Spanning this gap was an unusual bedform with a maximum height of 1.34 m and a maximum width of ∼8 m. Curiosity encountered, imaged, and successfully traversed this atypical bedform. In August of 2014, Curiosity began to traverse a field of ripples in Hidden Valley, but was forced to abort the attempt due to high wheel slip. The Hidden Valley ripples are ∼1/6 of the height of the Dingo Gap bedform, and yet posed a serious hazard to the rover. Here, we present a sedimentological analysis of the Dingo Gap bedform and the Hidden Valley ripples and discuss how their differences may have impacted rover traversability. The Dingo Gap and Hidden Valley bedforms are morphologically similar to many commonly observed bedforms on Mars that have few clear analogs on Earth, and Curiosity's encounters provide a framework for studying these bedforms in detail. Furthermore, the rover tracks across the bedforms have persisted for >5 Earth years, even through a global dust storm. The longevity of the tracks demonstrates that on multi‐year timescales (a) sediment transport on some Martian bedforms is inactive or slow enough that areas disturbed by the rover are not resurfaced, and (b) the rate of dust deposition on the Martian surface, even after a global dust storm, is too low to create an optically thick layer.

Basin-forming impacts expose material from deep within the interior of the Moon. Given the number of lunar basins, one would expect to find samples of the lunar mantle among those returned by the Apollo or Luna missions or within the lunar meteorite collection. However, only a few candidate mantle samples have been identified. Some remotely detected locations have been postulated to contain mantle-derived material, but none are mineralogically consistent upon study with multiple techniques. To locate potential remnants of the lunar mantle, we searched for early-crystallizing minerals using data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M 3) and the Diviner Lunar Radiometer (Diviner). While the lunar crust is largely composed of plagioclase, the mantle should contain almost none. M 3 spectra were used to identify massifs bearing mafic minerals and Diviner was used to constrain the relative abundance of plagioclase. Of the sites analyzed, only Mons Wolff was found to potentially contain mantle material. Plain Language Summary During the Moon's early development, minerals such as olivine and pyroxene would have crystallized first, sinking toward the lunar interior and becoming the primary components of the mantle. After approximately 70-80% of the magma ocean solidified, plagioclase began to crystallize and floated on the iron-rich residual melt. The lunar highland crust is characterized by an abundance of plagioclase, whereas samples of the mantle should contain very little plagioclase. Considering the size and number of large impact basins on the Moon, one would expect that some of these dug through the lunar crust, exposing lunar mantle. However, very few candidates for mantle material have been identified among the lunar samples on Earth. This study uses near-infrared data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper to identify sites on the surface that contain early-crystallizing minerals (olivine and pyroxene), which are indicative of mantle material. These sites were then analyzed using data from the Diviner Lunar Radiometer, which is able to constrain the abundance of these minerals relative to the amount of plagioclase present. Based on our analysis, the Imbrium Basin contains only one instance of rocks that are mineralogically consistent with being sourced from the mantle.