Four thousand Martian days after setting its wheels in Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover remains busy conducting exciting science. The rover recently drilled its 39th sample, then dropped the pulverized ...
To study whether ancient Mars had the conditions to support microbial life, the rover has been gradually ascending the base of 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) Mount Sharp, whose layers formed in different periods of Martian history and offer a record of how the planet's climate changed over time.
The latest sample was collected from a target nicknamed "Sequoia" (all of the mission's current science targets are named after locations in California's Sierra Nevada). Scientists hope the sample will reveal more about how the climate and habitability of Mars evolved as this region became enriched in sulfates—minerals that likely formed in salty water that was evaporating as Mars first began drying up billions of years ago. Eventually, Mars's liquid water disappeared for good.
"The types of sulfate and carbonate minerals that Curiosity's instruments have identified in the last year help us understand what Mars was like so long ago. We've been anticipating these results for decades, and now Sequoia will tell us even more," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission.
Deciphering the clues to Mars' ancient climate requires detective work. In a recent paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, team members used data from Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to discover a magnesium sulfate mineral called starkeyite, which is associated with especially dry climates like Mars's modern climate.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree panorama using its black-and-white navigation cameras, or Navcams, at a location where it collected a sample from a rock nicknamed “Sequoia.” The panorama was captured on Oct. 21 and 26, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used the drill on the end of its robotic arm to collect a sample from a rock nicknamed “Sequoia” on Oct. 17, 2023, the 3,980th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rover’s Mastcam captured this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS