NASA’s Curiosity rover has made an astonishing discovery on the red planet that may pique Elon Musk’s interest – pure sulfur crystals never seen before on Mars.
This groundbreaking find was made by chance as the rover drove over a pile of rocks, inadvertently cracking one open and revealing the unexpected crystals.
The discovery was described as “mind-blowing” by Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We saw this gorgeous texture and color inside that wasn’t like anything we’ve ever seen,” he said.
NEW YORK POST
Someone alert Elon Musk.
NASA’s Curiosity rover made a “mind-blowing” discovery on Mars — yellowish-green crystals of pure sulfur, never before seen on Earth’s mysterious red neighbor, according to scientists.
The literal ground-breaking find was made after the one-ton Curiosity drove over a pile of rocks and cracked one open while probing the deep and winding Gediz Vallis channel, believed to have been formed by water 3 billion years ago.
“I think it’s the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected,” Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory [JPL] in Pasadena, California, told CNN. “I have to say, there’s a lot of luck involved here. Not every rock has something interesting inside.”
The rover’s operators spotted white stones in the distance and mission scientists wanted to investigate further. On May 30, Vasavada and his team reviewed images from the rover that showed a crushed rock in the wheel’s tracks.
What they saw when they zoomed in was “mind-blowing,” he said, as they viewed the “gorgeous texture and color inside” of what had initially appeared to be a typical Martian rock.
They were even more shocked when analysis proved it was completely sulfur.
“No one had pure sulfur on their bingo card,” Vasavada said.
Sulfur rocks are usually “beautiful, translucent and crystalline,” according to Vasadava — but the millions of years of weathering sandblasted the rocks’ exterior, blending them with the rest of the orange Martian landscape.