Curiosity spies a Martian ‘flower’ formed out of rock

By Georgina Torbet March 13, 2022

NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently exploring Mars, has discovered an intriguing rock formation in the shape of a flower. The tiny object, smaller than a penny, was imaged by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera which sits on the end of its robotic arm.

“Stop and small the Martian ‘flower’,” NASA wrote on Twitter. “On Feb. 24, 2022, our @MarsCuriosity rover captured this image of a flower-like rock. Smaller than a penny, this and a bouquet of other findings gives scientists insight into the Red Planet’s ancient past.”

A flower-like rock artifact imaged by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover using its Mars Hand Lens Imager. — Smaller than a penny, the flower-like rock artifact on the left was imaged by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of its robotic arm. The image was taken on Feb. 24, 2022, the 3,396th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity came across the object on the 3396th Martian day of its mission, while it was exploring an area of Mars called the Greenheugh Pediment. The rover was investigating sedimentary rocks in this area and using its MAHLI camera to look at textures in the rocks as well as its Mastcam and ChemCam instruments to learn more about the composition of these rocks. In addition to snapping photos of striking rock shapes, Curiosity was also collecting images to form four mosaic images which will cover some more distant rocks and sand deposits.

As for the flower-shaped rock, according to NASA, it is not formed from any kind of organic process but rather was made by mineral deposits carried in water. Mars is now a dry planet with almost no liquid water on its surface, but millions of years ago there was abundant water there which flowed in rivers and created formations that still exist there today.

“The “flower,” along with the spherical rock artifacts seen to the right [of the image], were made in the ancient past when minerals carried by water cemented the rock,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes. “Curiosity has in the past discovered a diverse assortment of similar small features that formed when mineralizing fluids traveled through conduits in the rock. Images of such features are helping scientists understand more about the prolonged history of liquid water in Gale Crater.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

Perseverance rover collects its first sample of Martian dirt

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover snagged two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – on Dec. 2 and 6, 2022. This set of images, taken by the rover's left navigation camera, shows Perseverance's robotic arm over the two holes left after the samples were collected.

NASA's Perseverance rover, currently exploring Mars's Jezero Crater, has collected its first sample of dirt from the Martian surface. The rover has been collecting rock samples up until this point, but this month it has added scooping of the soil from the planet's surface, called regolith, to its collection. The plan is for a future mission to collect these samples and bring them back to Earth for study.
Studying this dusty matter is particularly important for designing tools and equipment for future Mars exploration. “Everything we learn about the size, shape, and chemistry of regolith grains helps us design and test better tools for future missions,” said Iona Tirona of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover snagged two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – on December 2 and 6, 2022. This set of images, taken by the rover's left navigation camera, shows Perseverance's robotic arm over the two holes left after the samples were collected. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Space

Rebooted Mars Express instrument peers inside martian moon Phobos

Mars Express HRSC image of Phobos, taken on 7 March 2010.

A nearly 20-year-old instrument on the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Mars Express orbiter recently received a software upgrade which has enabled it to study the martian moon Phobos in greater detail than ever before. The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding or MARSIS instrument was originally designed to study the interior of Mars, but in a recent flyby, it was able to gather close-up data on one of Mars's two moons.

MARSIS was updated from its Windows 98-based software earlier this summer, allowing it to collect and process data more efficiently. That let it take a deep look at Phobos. “We didn’t know if this was possible,” said ESA's Simon Wood, who oversaw the upload of the new software, in a statement. “The team tested a few different variations of the software, with the final, successful tweaks uploaded to the spacecraft just hours before the flyby.”

Space

Enormous meteor strike blows 500 foot-wide crater into Martian surface

Illustration of an impact causing surface waves to spread across Mars.

One of the biggest meteor strikes ever witnessed in the solar system has been recorded by two different Mars missions. The impact caused seismic waves to shake the planet and is helping scientists to understand more about the Martian interior.

The strike occurred on December 24, 2021, and scientists had already observed its results in the form of a magnitude 4 marsquake which was detected by the NASA InSight lander. But when reviewing images of the surface collected from orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers realized they could see an enormous crater that appeared at the same time, showing that the quakes were caused by a large impact.