What Curiosity Rover Found Inside a Mars Rock

[Yazata]

Curiosity has been investigating a Martian ravine believed to have been a water channel long ago, called Gediz Vallis. The rover rolled up on a whole area filled with unusual appearing light colored rocks. So it broke one of the rocks open to look at the inside. And the scientists at JPL were surprised to find that the inside of the rock was all green crystals.

These were determined to be pure elemental sulfur. The area was already known to contain sulfur, but the sulfur was all in the form of sulfur compounds like sulfates.

"Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-scien...tian-rock/

[Image: GS0_I6lXYAA0oXZ?format=jpg&name=large]

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