NASA’s Curiosity rover has made a ‘stunning’ discovery on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover has made a “stunning” discovery on Mars that scientists say “shouldn’t be there.”

The one-ton rover uncovered yellow-green crystals of pure sulfur while searching for chemical evidence that the Red Planet was once habitable.

While sulfur-containing minerals have been observed on the Martian world, elemental sulfur itself has never been seen before.

Curiosity accidentally cracked open white rocks as it traveled through the Gediz Vallis channel, revealing “strange” structures that add to growing evidence that Mars was once a habitable world.

Previous research has suggested that sulfur may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth more than four billion years ago, when the atmosphere it was rich in sulfur and carbon that was emitted by volcanic activity.

The microbes metabolized the sulfur isotopes, releasing oxygen and starting the process of oxygenating the atmosphere, known as the Great Oxygenation Event.

But the scientists didn’t say that Curiosity’s discovery is a sign of past life on Mars.

The finding added to growing evidence for other life-sustaining elements identified on Mars, including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus.

The discovery shows that water flowed on Mars, which is also a key component of life.

Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada said: “Finding a field of pure sulfur rocks is like finding an oasis in the desert.

“It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering the strange and unexpected is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”

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The ground-breaking discovery was made on May 30 as Curiosity traversed terrain in the Gediz Vallis channel, a trough that winds down part of the three-mile-high Mount Sharp – the base of which the rover has been climbing since 2014.

The six-wheeled rover has previously detected sulfur on Mars, but only mixed with other minerals such as magnesium and calcium.

Sulfur combined with other elements emits a pungent odor, but pure sulfur found on Mars is odorless.

NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California first identified the collection of white rocks and instructed Curiosity to explore.

The rover sent a close-up image of the white rocks back to Earth, which included an ear of crushed rock near Curiosity’s wheels.

And that’s when the team spotted the yellow crystals.

“I think it’s the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected,” Vasavada told CNN.

“I have to say that there is a lot of luck involved. Not every stone has something interesting inside.’

While the sulfur rocks were too small and fragile to be taken with a drill, a large rock nicknamed ‘Mammoth Lakes’ was spotted nearby.

Rover engineers had to search for a section of rock that would allow safe drilling and find a parking space on a loose, sloping surface.

After Curiosity drilled its 41st hole using a powerful drill at the end of the rover’s seven-foot robotic arm, the six-wheeled scientist poured dust rock into tools inside its belly for further analysis so scientists could determine what material the rock is made of. of.

“No one had pure sulfur on the bingo card,” Vasavada said.

Sulfuric rocks are typically characterized by a “beautiful, translucent and crystalline texture,” the researchers explained.

But the group seen on Mars has been sandblasted over millions of years, dulling the bright yellow color and making it appear reddish like the surrounding landscape.

However, the find added to growing evidence for other life-sustaining elements identified on Mars, including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus.

The Gediz Vallis channel is one of the main reasons why the science team wanted to visit this part of Mars. The area is located south of the Martian equator.

Scientists believe the channel was carved by streams of liquid water and debris left two miles down the mountainside below the channel.

The goal was to better understand how this landscape changed billions of years ago, and recent tracks have provided insights.

Since Curiosity arrived in the canal earlier this year, scientists have been investigating whether ancient floods or landslides created the large piles of debris that rise from the canal’s floor.

The latest tracks from Curiosity suggest that both played a role: some of the piles were likely left behind by violent flows of water and debris, while others appear to be the result of more localized landslides.

These conclusions are based on the rocks found in the ruins. While water-borne rocks are rounded like river rocks, some of the debris piles are littered with more angular rocks that may have been deposited by dry avalanches.

Eventually, the water seeped into all the material that settled there. Chemical reactions caused by water have bleached white “halo” shapes into some rocks. Erosion from wind and sand revealed these halo shapes over time.

“This has not been a quiet period on Mars,” said Becky Williams, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and deputy principal investigator for Curiosity’s Mast Camera.

“There was an exciting amount of activity. We are looking at several flows through the channel, including energy floods and boulder-rich flows.”