Nidhish Waghmare
On May 30, NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered an abundance of pure sulfur on Mars, rocks made up of pure sulfur. The scientists have revealed yellow sulfur crystals after recently drove over a rock and cracked it open.
As per NASA, The rover with six wheels has spotted something unusual, the pure sulfur without any mixture. Rover had found the sulfur before but it was a mixture of magnesium and calcium. Pure sulfur with an odorless element that forms under very certain conditions, planetary scientists hadn’t linked it with the rover’s location and it appears an entire field of bright rocks are scattered across the region.
Rover founded the Pure Sulfur
Since October 2023, rover has been exploring the region of Mars with rich sulfates but always ended up with a fixture of other minerals. As per recent research rover appears to have found pure sulfur.
According to Ashwin Vasavada, a Curiosity’s project scientist, NASA,
“Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert. It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
As per the rover’s picture of the rock, yellow small and brittle crystals can be seen. The crystals were too small for Curiosity to sample, so it ended up positioned around a large rock named as Mammoth Lakes.
What is Curiosity?
Curiosity, which is currently in its 12th year , is a car-sized rover exploring the region of Mars around Gale Crater and Mount Sharp. It was launched on November 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gate Crater on August 6, 2012, Mars. It is a part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, including environmental conditions and human exploration.
The main objective of Curiosity is to find whether Mars could ever support life or not and to find the role of water, climate and geology of Mars. It has mainly eight scientific goals to find the best possible answer.
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