“It’s an Oasis in the Desert” – NASA’s Amazing Discovery on Mars
It is, without a doubt, the most studied planet outside of Earth. And sooner or later, it will be the first one where humans set foot. We have studied it with satellites, probes, and rovers. And it is one of these, called Curiosity, that we have encountered. stumbled upon a surprise, or rather became the cause of one: As he passed over the stone, he broke it, and inside he discovered something that the scientists had not expected at all: pure sulfur.
The Curiosity rover, despite its maneuverability when passing an unknown planet without clear paths, is a 900-kilogram “6×6 monster”, it is not surprising that it can accidentally break geological samples along its way. What is surprising is that In this case, it is sulfur (the tenth most abundant element in the universe). in its pure elemental form.
“Find a field of pure sulfur stones. It’s like finding an oasis in the desert – points to statementAshwin Vasavada, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the people responsible for analyzing the discovery. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Finding weird and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
What also surprised scientists was the location where it was found. It was a channel in the Gediz Valley, a region full of rocks that look suspiciously like sulfur, suggesting that the element may be abundant in the area.
According to Vasavada’s team, the region is rich in sulphates, salts that They are formed by the evaporation of water.. Thus, sulfates become “traces” left by geology, chemistry and the passage of time, containing information about the presence of water and its composition.
Although we commonly associate sulfur with the smell of rotten eggs (due to hydrogen sulfide), sulfur in its elemental chemical form is odorless and only occurs in a narrow range. a number of conditions that scientists have not linked to the history of the regionBut Curiosity found more: a field of glowing rocks similar to those it crushed on its journey.
All this evidence of the presence of water the history of the past is more complex than the team’s initial expectations and so they sought to analyze the composition of the rocks in the area. The initial problem was that the sulfur rocks were too small and fragile to drill through, until the rover came across a rock nicknamed “Mammoth Lakes.” The engineers running Curiosity had to find a piece of rock that would allow them to drill through safely and analyze it. And it wasn’t easy.
After drilling his 41st hole with the help of a powerful drill Situated at the end of a 2-metre robotic arm, the rover fed crushed rock to instruments inside its belly for further analysis so scientists could determine what materials the rock was made of. We’ll probably have more information about this soon. And maybe even more surprises.