Check out some of the weird rocks that have turned up on Mars

Because the Mars rover Perseverance crested the tip of Witch Hazel Hill, its operators assist on Earth anticipated ideal things. This residence on the western rim of the Jezero crater, along an aged river delta that Perseverance has been exploring because it landed in 2021, is believed to possess about a of the oldest rocks on this planet’s surface. The light-toned, layered presents promise a story of a wetter time, per chance one that hosted life.

The physique of workers did no longer search files from of what they chanced on on March 11: a darkish rock resembling a grab of frog’s eggs. Dubbed St. Paul’s Bay, the rock appears to be like to be like nothing love its neighbors. The place it came from and how it fashioned are a mystery.

It’s appropriate form basically the most modern queer rock discovered in almost 30 years of rovers rolling across the Martian surface. Within the past year by myself, the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have chanced on a lot of rocks unlike the leisure seen on Mars sooner than.

These forms of rocks raise lessons about the history of water on Mars and its potential for supporting life. One even contains animated hints that microbes in actuality were active on Mars as soon as — hints that to this point have stood up to scrutiny.

“After decades, we proceed to be vastly stunned by the things we peek on this wonderfully complex planet,” says planetary scientist Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif.

As calls to send humans to the Crimson Planet intensify, an intensive watch Martian life grows extra main. Once humans advance, it'll be no longer doubtless to repeat whether biological indicators were Martian to launch with or introduced from Earth.

“The attitude we receive from our rovers­ — and helicopters! — on the surface is so main for our exploration,” Fraeman says.

Here’s a tour of about a of the weirdest rocks ever seen on Mars, all noticed within the ideally suited year.

The sulfur within the stone

In gradual May 2024, the Curiosity rover drove over a rock and cracked it initiate, revealing yellow crystals of pure sulfur inner.

Whereas scientists have seen sulfur on Mars sooner than, it became always poke up with other formulation to waste salts love sulfate. Curiosity’s devices confirmed that this rock contained pure, elemental sulfur.

“This has never been chanced on on Mars sooner than, ever,” Fraeman says.

On Earth, elemental sulfur kinds in diversified environments, including sizzling springs, chilly springs, hydrothermal deposits, volcanoes and their associated vents. In some settings, love the Arctic, elemental sulfur’s formation is said to microbial narrate.

“That’s no longer the default assumption here, but it’s inspiring,” Fraeman says.

Historical past urges caution on the microbial front. Old claims that Mars rocks possess indicators of life, such because the ALH84001 meteorite within the Nineties, sparked pleasure sooner than it became shown that the purported fossils fashioned thru geological processes as a change.

To abet narrow down how the yellow crystals fashioned, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will compare the on-speak chemistry prognosis of the Martian sulfur to samples from Hawaii, the Chilean Atacama barren discipline and a hydrothermal volcanic discipline in New Mexico known as Valles Caldera.

How the leopard got its spots

Within the Jezero crater, the Perseverance rover has been having a watch indicators of past life. In July 2024, it looked to ultimately uncover it.

The pleasure came from a rock named Cheyava Falls, which is speckled with shaded, blue and green spots researchers dubbed “poppy seeds” along with a exiguous bit better bull’s-query capabilities known as “leopard spots.” The poppy seeds and the outer rims of the leopard spots are neatly off in iron phosphate molecules.

On Earth, similar spots construct within the presence of microbes. The chemical reactions that produce the iron phosphate rings provide energy for microbial development.

“These properties set up poppy seeds and leopard spots as potential biosignatures,” wrote planetary scientist Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook College in New York and colleagues in an summary for the Lunar and Planetary Science Convention, held in The Woodlands, Texas, in March.

NASA had before all the things offered the discovering in a news release on July 25. Since then, scientists had been testing diversified scenarios to gift how the poppy seeds and leopard spots can have fashioned. Geobiologist Michael Tice of Texas A&M College in College Jam and colleagues offered their prognosis of those scenarios on the LPSC meeting.

“Though other potential abiotic mechanisms desires to be investigated, this prognosis means that biological metabolisms are the in all likelihood processes for the time being proposed for formation of these modern capabilities,” the crew wrote in their convention summary.

Perseverance drilled a sample from the rock and kept it for a future mission to formulation to Earth. That mission’s funding is for the time being in limbo.

A zebra can’t replace its stripes

About a months later, Perseverance chanced on yet any other rock corresponding to flowers and fauna: one with stark shaded-and-white stripes.

“This rock is informally named ‘Freya Citadel,’ but the physique of workers affectionately calls it ‘zebra rock’ for evident causes,” says planetary scientist Katie Stack Morgan of the Jet Propulsion Lab. “Between the leopard spots at Cheyava Falls and our new zebra rock, we’re beginning to maintain up our rock menagerie.”

The rock became noticed in low-resolution navigation digicam photos because the rover traversed some pebbly terrain. Engineers snapped a more in-depth photograph with the rover’s predominant digicam but drove Perseverance away sooner than the photos downloaded to Earth.

Which technique scientists don’t have any files on the rock’s composition, Stack Morgan says. But from the closeup portray, a moderately priced bet is that the white formulation of the rock are feldspar, a frequent mineral in both Earth’s and Mars’ crust. The shaded stripes is also a pyroxene, frequently fashioned in volcanic lava, or amphibole, a form of silicate-bearing mineral.

Nothing love this has been seen on Mars sooner than, but on Earth, the zebra stripe sample occurs in volcanic rocks fashioned specifically forms of magma chambers. One thing is particular, Stack Morgan says: Freya Citadel is so varied from the underlying bedrock that it potentially became no longer born the place it sits now.

“We don’t know the place it came from or how it chanced on its technique into the crater,” she says, but it will probably probably have arrangement from aged bedrock exposed inner the rim of the Jezero crater. Perseverance is for the time being utilizing along that rim and can uncover the zebra rock’s source there.

spherules

St. Paul’s Bay — the “frog’s eggs rock” noticed on March 11 — is corresponding to other unprecedented finds.

Almost at this time after landing in 2004, the Opportunity rover discovered hematite spherules dubbed “blueberries.” And Fraeman says that St. Paul’s Bay reminds her of yet any other Opportunity discovering: a sphere-studded rock with a certain composition that the physique of workers known as “newberries.”

It’s no longer particular if the spheres in both of those rocks are associated to the ones in St. Paul’s Bay. These newfound spheres can have fashioned from groundwater circulating thru the rock’s pores in Mars’s past (a that you just can think of origin story for the blueberries as neatly). They're going to also have originated from impulsively cooling molten droplets following a volcanic eruption or from rock that became vaporized after a meteorite influence and which ability that of this truth recondensed.

Admire the zebra rock, St. Paul’s Bay is more seemingly to be a geological interloper. Determining the place it came from shall be main to determining how it fashioned.