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Curiosity Ran Over a Rock – and Found Something Never Seen Before on Mars

posted by hubie on Wednesday July 31, @04:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the rock-and-roll dept.

upstart writes:

The NASA rover's accidental discovery challenges what we know about the region:

For the last 10 months, NASA's curiosity has been investigating a region of Mount Sharp that is of high interest. It has signs of a violent watery past and the chemical analysis has revealed the presence of many minerals including sulfates. And as the rover moved about it accidentally cracked open a rock. And inside it saw pure sulfur crystals.

Pure sulfur had never been seen before on Mars. And while sulfates have sulfur, there is not a clear relationship between the formation of those molecules and the pure crystals. Elemental sulfur crystals form only in a narrow range of conditions. And none of those have been expected for this region.

"Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."

The region Curiosity is exploring is known as the Gediz Vallis channel. It is a groove across Mount Sharp that has been an area of interest since long before the rover began climbing the relief in 2014. From orbit, scientists could see the presence of large mounds of debris. But the cause of them was not apparent. Was it landslides or ancient floodwaters that shifted the material along the channel?

Curiosity has been able to provide an answer. A bit of column A and a bit of column B. Rocks shifted by water are smoother and rounded. Those shifted by dry avalanches are angular and sharp. Both types of rocks are found among the mounds.

"This was not a quiet period on Mars," said Becky Williams, a scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and the deputy principal investigator of Curiosity's Mast Camera, or Mastcam. "There was an exciting amount of activity here. We're looking at multiple flows down the channel, including energetic floods and boulder-rich flows."

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 31, @11:14PM (2 children)

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 31, @11:14PM (#1366529)
    So does this mean that sulphur abounds on Mars or does it mean that Nasa just hit a really improbable shot?
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by khallow on Thursday August 01, @01:29AM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 01, @01:29AM (#1366547) Journal
      Mount Sharp (also known as Aeolis Mons) is a 5500 meter tall (measured from the floor of the Gale Crater) mountain that was formed by uplift from the asteroid impact that formed the crater. Reading about this, it appears that the uplift is due to the crater partly collapsing or settling with the center (and its extremely disrupted structure) getting pushed up by the movement. While there are probably a lot of Martian mountains formed in the same way, this is relatively exotic geology and chemistry that won't apply everywhere. So it might be something specific to how the mountain was formed, the local region, or even chemicals of the asteroid impactor.

      OTOH, stuff like that is unlikely to happen in only one way. There might be other conditions not having anything to do with impact craters that could form elemental sulfur.

      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday August 01, @02:15AM

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 01, @02:15AM (#1366551)
        Very insightful, thank you. It makes me excited for what happens next. I mean given the minuscule surface area the rover can possibly explore, and how relatively dull (I mean to the general population, not dull to science) the planet is I expected a lot less news to be made from it. It has me wondering if I can let myself have a little more anticipation for what might happen... let my imagination wander... Or if I should just let it chill.

        Either way, thank you for summarizing it in a way that gave me a lot more enthusiasm for this news bit. Appreciated!
        --
        🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by ChrisMaple on Thursday August 01, @05:39AM

    by ChrisMaple (6964) on Thursday August 01, @05:39AM (#1366565)

    We've crushed the egg of an ancient Martian. Now the Curse of Marvin is upon us.

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