NASA scientists say pure sulfur has been found on Mars for the first time after the Curiosity rover accidentally uncovered a cluster of yellow crystals when it passed over a rock. The area appeared to be filled with sulfur. It’s an unexpected discovery — while sulfur-containing minerals have been observed on the Red Planet, elemental sulfur alone has never been seen before. “The sulfur only forms in a narrow range of conditions that scientists have not yet linked to the history of this site,” NASA scientists said. .
Curiosity cracked the rock on May 30 while driving through an area known as the Geddes Vallis Channel, where similar rocks have been seen all over the place. The channel is thought to have been carved by water and debris flows long ago. “Finding a field of rocks made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Finding strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
After spotting the yellow crystals, the team later used a camera mounted on Curiosity’s robotic arm to take a closer look at them. The rover then took a sample from another nearby rock, as the pieces of rock it had broken off were too fragile to drill into. Curiosity is equipped with tools that allow it to analyze the composition of rocks and soils, and NASA says its Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) confirmed it had found elemental sulfur.
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