Over the past 13 years, the four-wheeled Curiosity rover has traveled approximately 21 miles (34 kilometers) across the Martian surface to gather clues about the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet. A recent discovery by the metallic explorer could provide an answer to the longstanding question of what happened to Mars\u2019 atmosphere billions of years ago, and how the planet may have transformed from a wet, life-friendly world to a dry and arid desert.<\/p>\n
The Curiosity rover recently uncovered large deposits of carbon within sulfate-rich layers of Mount Sharp in Mars\u2019 impact basin, Gale Crater. In a paper<\/a> published this month in the journal Science, data from three of Curiosity\u2019s drill sites revealed an abundance of siderite\u2014an iron carbonate mineral that had been a missing piece in the puzzle of Mars\u2019 wet, habitable past.<\/p>\n Water and carbon dioxide react to form carbonate minerals. Based on the theory of Mars\u2019 potentially habitable past, the planet may have once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and liquid water on its surface. So if both water and carbon dioxide were present during Mars\u2019 ancient past, then so should evidence of carbonate minerals. Previous discoveries, however, weren\u2019t able to find sufficient amounts of carbonate to match the theory. That is until Curiosity\u2019s recent discovery.<\/p>\n \u201cThe discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars,\u201d Benjamin Tutolo, associate professor at the University of Calgary, Canada, and lead author of the paper, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although scientists have long suspected that Mars had an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, Curiosity\u2019s findings are the first mineral evidence to support that theory. \u201cIt tells us that the planet was habitable and that the models for habitability are correct,\u201d Tutolo added<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Mars\u2019 atmosphere thinned over time, the carbon dioxide transformed into rock form. The carbon dioxide had been warming the planet up until that time, and when it began to precipitate as siderite, it affected the planet\u2019s ability to remain warm and maintain its surface water, according to the researchers.<\/p>\n Curiosity rover uses a drill attached to its arm to bore holes in Martian rock and collect the powdered samples from the rock into its belly. The rover drills about three to four centimeters into Mars\u2019 subsurface, and the samples are deposited into its CheMin instrument, which uses X-ray diffraction to analyze rocks and soil. \u201cDrilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book,\u201d Thomas Bristow, research scientist at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center, and coauthor of the paper, said in a statement. \u201cJust a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the carbonate minerals were found beneath the surface of Mars, the discovery suggests that they may be masked by other minerals in near-infrared satellite images of the planet from orbit. That may explain why previous missions have failed at finding evidence of carbonate minerals on Mars. If carbonate minerals are abundant in other sulfate-rich areas on Mars, that is enough to create conditions for a warm world with liquid water on its surface, according to the paper.<\/p>\n \u201cEarth\u2019s surface has been continuously habitable since about 3.5 billion years ago, but Mars\u2019s surface evolved from more habitable early on, to uninhabitable today,\u201d Edwin Kite, associate professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and third author on the paper, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThis discovery helps us understand the mechanisms that drove the two planets down very different paths.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past 13 years, the four-wheeled Curiosity rover has traveled approximately 21 miles (34 kilometers) across the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[13453,790,874,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-42954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-curiosity-rover","9":"tag-mars","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114385501570953649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}