Curiosity is investigating a strangely colored rock it found on Mars

By Georgina Torbet Published April 28, 2022

Curiosity is spending its weekend investigating an oddity at its newest drill location on Mars, called Breamish. The rover has discovered an unusual rock showing some strange colors, so scientists will use the rover’s chemistry tools to learn more about this unexpected object.

Over the three-day weekend plan for the rover, it will investigate the platy rock target — a type of igneous rock which is split into flat sheets. The rock in question can be seen in the image below, just above Curiosity’s arm. After this task, the rover will be using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument which analyzes organic molecules and gases both from the atmosphere and from samples, and then return to Breamish and other rocks to analyze them using its ChemCam instrument, which fires a laser at targets to vaporize parts of them and analyze their composition.

This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2824. — This image was taken by Left Navigation Camera onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2824. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity is currently on a “summer road trip” as it gradually ascends Mount Sharp, the enormous mountain coming out of the floor of the Gale Crater. The rover has been in an area called the clay-bearing unit, named because of the presence of clay minerals in the soil. Now it is moving on toward the sulfate-bearing unit, which, as its name suggests, has sulfates like gypsum and Epsom salts in the soil. These sulfates are of particular interest as they often form when water evaporates, so their presence could give clues to the history of water on Mars.

Recommended Videos

Scientists know that Mars once had water on its surface, and could even have provided a habitable environment for life. The possibility that there was ancient life on Mars has been the subject of intense study, with rovers working to investigate this question for decades.

“Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunity’s search for the history of water,” Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has served as deputy project scientist for both missions, said in a statement. “We’re uncovering an ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized.”

The search for ancient life will continue with the newest rover, Perseverance, which is set to launch in a few weeks’ time.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

The Curiosity rover reaches a milestone on Mars

Curiosity Rover

NASA's Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring Mars' Gale Crater, recently marked an impressive milestone: 4,000 days on Mars. The rover landed more than a decade ago on August 5, 2012, and since then it has continued to explore the area, collect rock samples, and make its way up the epic slopes of Mount Sharp.

The 4,000 days are measured in mission time, which is calculated in martian days or sols. Due to the differing rates of rotation of Earth and Mars, a day on Mars is slightly longer than a day on Earth, by about 40 minutes. And also, due to the difference distances between Earth and Mars and the sun, a martian year is longer too - at 668 sols, equivalent to 687 Earth days. Those working on Mars rover missions, especially the rover drivers, have to operate on Mars time, so their schedules are out of sync with typical Earth working hours and they generally work on 90-sol shifts to allow them time to readjust to Earth schedules.

Space

Map of Mars shows the location of ice beneath the planet’s surface

In this artist’s concept, NASA astronauts drill into the Martian subsurface. The agency has created new maps that show where ice is most likely to be easily accessible to future astronauts.

One of the challenges of sending human explorers to Mars is that, due to the logistics of the journey, they will have to be on the planet's surface for considerably longer than the missions of a few days which have been sent to the moon in the past. That means future explorers will need access to resources like food, water, and oxygen -- and rather than having to carry months' worth of supplies through space, it's far more efficient to find ways to produce those resources on Mars itself.

That's the idea behind searching for water ice deposits on Mars. There's plenty of ice on the surface around the planet's poles, but most mission concepts are more focused on the planet's equatorial region. The good news is that there is ice present in these areas too, but the bad news is that it's primarily located below the surface and is thus hard to locate.

Space

Curiosity rover battles up a 23-degree slope in its exploration of Mars

Curiosity Rover

The Curiosity rover is slowly making its way up Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall mountain on Mars. Mountains are useful to study as their steep slopes can reveal layers of material laid down over time, like a geological time capsule. But just like heaving up a mountain is a challenge for humans, it can be tricky for rovers too. Curiosity recently took on a particularly steep and slippery slope, marking its most challenging climb to date.

How difficult terrain is for a rover to pass depends on a number of factors, including how steep it is, how slippery the sand is, and what obstacles such as boulders or sharp rocks are present. This ascent, which the rover tackled through May and June, had all of the above including a 23-degree incline. “If you’ve ever tried running up a sand dune on a beach – and that’s essentially what we were doing – you know it’s hard, but there were boulders in there as well,” said Amy Hale, a Curiosity rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a statement.