Pasadena, CA, July 23, 2024 – NASA’s Curiosity rover has made a groundbreaking discovery on Mars: rocks composed of pure sulfur, a phenomenon never before observed on the Red Planet. This unexpected finding occurred when the one-ton rover drove over a pile of rocks in the Gediz Vallis channel, cracking them open and revealing the sulfur within.
According to CNN, the discovery is significant as it marks the first of its kind in 30 years of Mars exploration. “I think it’s the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “I have to say, there’s a lot of luck involved here. Not every rock has something interesting inside.”
The news was shared on social media by Mars Curiosity, which wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “Cronch I ran over a rock and found crystals inside! It’s pure sulfur. (And no, it doesn’t smell.) Elemental sulfur is something we’ve never seen before on Mars. We don’t know much about these yellow crystals yet, but my team is excited to investigate.”
Curiosity’s mission team was particularly interested in the deep and winding Gediz Vallis channel, believed to have formed by water three billion years ago. Upon spotting white stones in the distance, the scientists decided to take a closer look. On May 30, Vasavada and his team reviewed images from the rover showing a crushed rock in the wheel’s tracks, revealing a “mind-blowing” find.
The team observed the “gorgeous texture and color inside” what initially seemed to be a typical Martian rock. The analysis revealed it was completely sulfur, a discovery that left scientists astonished. “No one had pure sulfur on their bingo card,” Vasavada remarked. He explained that sulfur rocks are usually “beautiful, translucent, and crystalline,” but millions of years of weathering had sandblasted their exteriors, blending them with the rest of the orange Martian landscape.
Moreover, the rover did not just encounter a few sulfur rocks but an entire field of them, exposing scientists to a large quantity. “Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting,” Vasavada said.
Curiosity had previously discovered various sulfates or salts containing sulfur formed when water evaporates. However, pure sulfur typically forms on Earth under extreme conditions such as volcanic processes or in hot springs.
Scientists are now probing what the presence of pure sulfur means for Mars and its geological history. This discovery could provide new insights into the planet’s past and the extreme conditions that may have existed.
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