NASA Makes Surprising Discovery on Mars – 'It Shouldn't Be There'

NASA Discovers Pure Sulfur on Mars – 'It Shouldn't Be There'

“Finding a field of pure sulfur rock is like an oasis in the desert,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory once said. noticeSo far, sulfur-containing minerals have been found on Mars—a mixture of sulfur and other materials—but pure sulfur has never been found. It remains unclear whether pure sulfur is related to the sulfur-containing minerals found so far on Mars.

Pure sulfur only forms under certain conditions—for example, volcanic or hydrothermal activity—and none of these have yet been linked to the location on Mars. “Pure sulfur shouldn’t exist, so now we have to explain it,” Vasavada says. “Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”

NASA's Curiosity rover has been rolling over Mars for nearly 12 years.

The yellow sulfur crystals seen in the image the rover sent back to Earth were “too small and fragile” to be removed by Curiosity with a drill, according to NASA. So the rover used the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on its robotic arm to determine the rock's composition.

Curiosity examines Mount Sharp on Mars

The pure sulfur is one of several discoveries made by Curiosity in a Martian channel called Geddes Vallis. The valley runs down a five-kilometer-high section of Mount Sharp, which the rover has been climbing since 2014. Each layer of the mountain represents a different period in Mars’ history. Curiosity is looking for clues about where and when ancient Martian terrain might have provided the nutrients necessary for microbial life on the planet — if it ever existed.

Gediz Vallis was discovered before the rover was launched from space, and is one of the main reasons the science team behind the mission chose this area of ​​Mars for Curiosity. Scientists believe the channel was created by the movement of liquid water.(Unpaid invoice)