Featured Image Credit: SWNS
Topics: Science, Space, NASA, Technology
Tom Earnshaw
NASA scientists have been left 'stunned' by a discovery on Mars after accidentally smashing open a boulder on the Red Planet.
The American space agency's Curiosity vehicle, which cost $2.5 billion (£1.93 billion) happened to drive over a large rock, with it giving way beneath the weight of the rover.
What was found within the boulder has left scientists wide-eyed, after crumbling to reveal yellow sulfur crystals.
It's a pretty huge discovery given that rocks made of pure sulfur is something that has never seen before on Mars before now.
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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.
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Curiosity made the discovery while off-roading within Gediz Vallis channel, a groove that winds down part of the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp, the base of which the rover has been ascending since 2014.
NASA say 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 in Southern California, US, said: "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert.
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"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 small of rotten eggs, the result of hydrogen sulfide gas, NASA confirm that elemental sulfur is odourless.
It's the latest discovery on the Red Planet and follows in the footsteps of mysterious holes found dotted on Mars' surface.
To this day, experts do not know what they are.
The crater-like opening of one of the holes is about 150 feet across and sits right on the edge of an ancient volcano.