The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - July 19, 2024
These yellow crystals were revealed after a wheel on NASA's Curiosity cracked open a rock. An instrument on the rover's arm confirmed the crystals represent the first elemental sulfur ever discovered on Mars.
While exploring a region of the Martian landscape that has all the telltale signs of ancient floods and landslides that occurred when Mars' climate was much more like Earth than the frozen desert it is today, NASA's Curiosity made a surprising discovery – the first ever pure sulfur ever discovered on the Red Planet.
The outside of the sulfur-rich rock crushed by Curiosity looked like this specimen nicknamed Snow Lake that was cleaned off for a better view.
This Martian minerals discovery was a fortuitous accident that could be likened to an earthbound geologist tripping over a gold nugget while prospecting for gold deposit.
As the robotic astrogeologist was investigating Gediz Vallis channel, which is believed to be carved by a river running down the side of the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp billions of years ago, one of Curiosity's wheels broke open a rock it was driving over. A quick look by the rover's iconic MastCam revealed that yellow crystals of pure sulfur were hidden inside the otherwise unassuming Martian stone.
A wider scan revealed an entire field of the same pale colored rocks.
"Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Ashwin Vasavada, a Curiosity project scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Drag your mouse or move your phone to explore a 360-degree panorama of the area of Gediz Vallis Channel where NASA's Curiosity rover discovered elemental sulfur.
While pure sulfur was a surprising discovery, the fact that this region of Mars is enriched with this "burning stone" element that is used for making matches, fertilizer, and other products here on Earth was not unexpected.
In fact, scientists were counting on Curiosity coming across sulfates, which are sulfur-bearing salts such as the sodium chloride (table salt) and magnesium sulfate (Epson salt) we use here on Earth, while exploring this area of Mars. These sulfur minerals, which are believed to have been deposited as streams and ponds on the Red Planet dried up, could offer clues to Mars' distant past.
The discovery of pure elemental sulfur, however, raises a whole new set of questions for Earthling scientists to ponder. How were the sulfur crystals formed? Are they related to the other sulfur minerals found in the area?
"It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it," said Vasavada. "Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."
Curiosity has made plenty of exciting discoveries over its more than 4,230 sols (Martian days) of exploring the Red Planet. Each layer the robotic astrogeologist and astrobiologist encounters as it treks up Mount Sharp provide clues to different periods of Martian history.
Early last year, Curiosity discovered Martian opals in an ancient lakebed that provided clues that subsurface water and conditions conducive to microbial life may have been present on the Red Planet long after the surface water had dried up.
The Gediz Vallis channel now being explored by the rover is a dramatic landscape that seems to have been shaped in part by powerful floods and landslides.
Curiosity rover captured this view of Gediz Vallis channel, a dynamic landscape that was likely formed by large floods of water and debris that piled jumbles of rocks into mounds within the channel.
After the channel formed, it was filled with boulders and other debris. Photos from space indicate that the large mounds of rocks and other debris were deposited by ancient floodwaters or dry landslides. Curiosity's investigation has discovered that the rocks in the debris fields are both rounded like river boulders and angular like they broke off bedrock, suggesting both flooding and landslides were at play.
"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 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."
Given the dynamic geological history, scientists were eager to take a rock sample for this region.
Rocks such as the one Curiosity ran over exposing sulfur crystals, however, are too brittle to collect a drill sample. Instead, a large rock nicknamed "Mammoth Lakes" was selected for sampling.
With instruments inside the belly of Curiosity analyzing the pulverized drill sample, the rover continued its quest up Mount Sharp to learn more about the geological history and investigate for clues of potential ancient microbial life on Mars.
With more than 16 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration and technology metals.
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