Mars scientists are “stunned” after an unprecedented find inside a rock accidentally cracked open by a rover.
NASA’s Curiosity vehicle drove over a boulder, which crumbled to reveal yellow sulfur crystals.
Rocks made of pure sulfur are something never seen before on the Red Planet.
A NASA spokesperson said: “It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven’t associated with the history of this location.
“And Curiosity found a lot of it — an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed.”
Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals — in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials — the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental, or pure, sulfur.
Curiosity made the discovery while off-roading within Gediz Vallis channel, a groove that winds down part of the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometre-tall) Mount Sharp, the base of which the rover has been ascending since 2014.
NASA says it isn’t clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.
The space agency reported: “Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals.”
Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert.
“It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
Thankfully, while people associate sulfur with the smell of rotten eggs, the result of hydrogen sulfide gas, NASA confirms that elemental sulfur is odorless.
Produced in association with SWNS Talker
