2024-07-31 04:00:13
Surprising discoveries often emerge by chance. That’s what happened when NASA’s Curiosity rover accidentally crushed a rock on Mars, revealing an abundance of never-before-seen crystals. Those sparkling yellow shards deep in the roche have aroused the interest of scientists, marking a new stage in theexploration Martian.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
On May 30, as Curiosity explored the Gediz Vallis channel on the slopes of Mount Sharp in the crater Galeit drove over a small rock, fracturing it. The rover’s cameras then revealed bright yellow crystals inside the rock. These crystals, too small and delicate for the rover to handle, revealed their composition: pure sulfur. Sulfur had been detected on Mars before, but only in the form of compounds called sulfates. The discovery of elemental sulfur is a first. Scientists had suspected its presence, but finding it on the surface is unexpected.
Ashwin Vasavada, a Curiosity mission scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stressed the significance of this unexpected discovery, saying it’s what makes exploration planetary so “exciting.” Photos of the surrounding area show that the ground is dotted with similar geodes, suggesting a widespread presence of pure sulfur in this region.
Although the presence of yellow crystals has not been confirmed in other rocks, scientists are confident that nearby rocks also contain sulfur, making this area a major site of interest for future research.
Curiosity, since its arrival in 2012, has made several discoveries in and around Gediz Vallis. In February, it photographed “waves” carved by an ancient Martian lake, and in May, it discovered rocks containingoxide of manganeseindicating that Mars once had a atmosphere rich in oxygensimilar to that of the Terre.
1722420659
#NASAs #Curiosity #Rover #Accidentally #Discovers #Unknown #Crystals #Mars
