Aliens aren’t terraforming Mars, but one of NASA‘s rovers just found something with a strange texture that might entice a cauliflower lover to do a double-take.
Curiosity, a Mini Cooper-sized lab on wheels, was ambling over rugged terrain a few days ago this March when its navigation camera spotted some Martian rocks unlike any others. The scientists leading the rover’s expedition say they’ve never seen anything quite like this on the Red Planet.
“Oh my glob,” the anthropomorphic Curiosity account posted on X. “What are these lumpy rocks?”
But Curiosity wasn’t the only one with a geological mystery. At the same time, roughly 2,300 miles away on the other side of the planet, Perseverance found bumpy rocks of a different kind, calling to mind the famous “Martian blueberries” discovered by the Opportunity rover in 2004.
Curiosity took close-up pictures of a strange bumpy rock it discovered on Mars in March.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Since its mission launched in 2011, Curiosity has traveled about 352,000,020 miles: some 352 million whizzing through space and another 20 over the rusty-dusty terrain. Right now it’s on its way to an unexplored part of Gale Crater, called a “boxwork” region, which likely necessitated warm groundwater to form eons ago.
Often outshined by its younger twin rover Perseverance, Curiosity stole back the limelight earlier this week for a monumental discovery based on one of its rock samples. Within it, researchers detected the largest organic molecules yet on Mars, suggesting the chemistry needed for life may have progressed further on the Red Planet than once thought. The molecules, which contain long chains of carbon atoms, could be pieces of fatty acids, key ingredients for Earth life.
Though the organic molecule find, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, isn’t proof of life, it does encourage scientists that other more complex molecules linked to life could still be on Mars. Previously, researchers have been skeptical over whether such evidence could remain on the planet after millions of years of radiation and environmental changes.
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Suffice to say, Curiosity is not to be underestimated in its scientific value. The team gave Curiosity’s new rocks official names — Manzana Creek and Palo Comado — and took pictures for the record. The leftward rock in the image at the top of this story has jagged, vertical surfaces and “a lot of crazy rough texture,” according to the mission journal.
Perseverance discovered a bumpy rock on the rim of the Jezero Crater in March.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / IRAP
“The rocks were shaped by a combination of wind and water over time, resulting in the cool textures we see today,” Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, told Mashable.
Perseverance’s bumpy rock, on the other hand, looks a little more like a cluster of miniature peas than cauliflower. It’s covered in millimeter-scale beads, some pierced with tiny pinholes. The rover found the rock, officially dubbed St. Pauls Bay, around the rim of Jezero Crater.
And it seems both rovers’ sightings have flummoxed their humans.
“What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes?” wrote Alex Jones, a researcher working on the Mars 2020 mission team, in a blog post.
A Martian rock, dubbed St. Pauls Bay, stands out in gray in a field of reddish-brown terrain.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU
Spherical features can form on rocks when water flows through them, creating concretions of minerals over time. But they can also form in other ways, like in volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes. When droplets of molten rock are thrown into the air by volcanoes or impacts, they cool as they travel, hardening in little balls.
Scientists will continue studying the rocks using the tools available to them on the rovers, but such finds reinforce the desire for NASA to bring samples back to Earth for more rigorous studies.
Right now the space agency is trying to figure out how to save its Mars Sample Return mission, the plan to fly home bits of rock, dust, and air collected by Perseverance. NASA will spend the next year working on engineering plans for two potential new approaches that are considered less complicated and expensive.
