NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uncovers Trove of Yellow Crystals on Mars

For astir 10 years, NASA’s four-wheeled robot has been climbing the foothills of Mount Sharp, a gangly upland connected Mars that stands supra an past crater, uncovering mysteries with each of its layers. In its latest discovery, the Martian explorer stumbled upon a tract of rocks made of axenic sulfur, a chemic constituent that could clasp precious clues to the Red Planet’s watery past.

The Curiosity rover precocious drove implicit a rock, accidentally cracking it open. Inside were shiny yellowish crystals, which scientists aboriginal determined to beryllium elemental sulfur, NASA said. Although sulfur-based minerals (a premix of sulfur with different materials) person been recovered connected Mars before, this is the archetypal find of rocks made of axenic sulfur. And determination could beryllium a full clump of them connected Mars, but scientists aren’t definite however they formed.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“Finding a tract of stones made of axenic sulfur is similar uncovering an oasis successful the desert,” Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s task idiosyncratic astatine NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said successful a statement. “It shouldn’t beryllium there, truthful present we person to explicate it.”

Pure sulfur is tasteless and odorless, and it’s people recovered successful volcanic regions arsenic a effect of the oxidation of hydrogen-sulfide. But this peculiar portion that Curiosity has been exploring has shown nary signs of past volcanic activity. Pure sulfur tin besides form done the oxidation of reduced sulfur compounds by mode of microbial activity. In that case, the find of sulfur connected Mars could beryllium utile successful the hunt for past microbial beingness connected the Red Planet.

The Curiosity rover captured this presumption of Gediz Vallis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gediz Vallis, a winding transmission that whitethorn person been carved retired by an past stream that near a 2-mile way of boulders and sediment. By exploring this region, the rover is gathering clues for places successful the planet’s past terrain that could person provided the nutrients needed for microbial beingness to perchance signifier connected Mars.

Curiosity could not snatch a illustration of the sulfur rocks due to the fact that they were excessively tiny and brittle, but it did find a ample stone adjacent that the squad nicknamed “Mammoth Lakes.” The rover utilized a drill attached astatine the extremity of its 7-foot (2-meter) robotic limb to marque a spread successful the stone and grabbed samples that tin beryllium analyzed by on-board instruments wrong the rover’s belly.

“Discovering unusual and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration truthful exciting,” Vasavada said.

More: Things You Didn’t Know About NASA’s Mars Rovers