The Curiosity rover took a photo of something quite enticing this week on the surface of Mars. While the things in concern appears like a tiny little flower or maybe even some kind of natural feature, the rover team verified this things is a mineral formation, with delicate structures that formed by minerals precipitating from water.
Curiosity has really seen these types of features in the past, which are called diagenetic crystal clusters. Diagenetic implies the recombination or rearrangement of minerals, and these functions include three-dimensional crystal clusters, likely made from a combination of minerals. Curiosity deputy job researcher Abigail Fraeman stated on Twitter that these functions that were seen formerly were made of salts called sulfates.
( 1/3) Your Friday minute of zen: A gorgeous brand-new microscopic image from @MarsCuriosity reveals teeny, tiny delicate structures that formed by mineral speeding up from water.
( Penny approximately for scale added me) https://t.co/cs7t11BWAj pic.twitter.com/AU20LjY5pQ
— Abigail Fraeman (@abbyfrae) February 26, 2022
From research studies of previous features like this found on Mars (you can read a paper on them here), originally the function was embedded within a rock, which eroded away in time. These mineral clusters, nevertheless, appear to be resistant to erosion.
Another name for these features is concretion, which you may keep in mind from the Opportunity rover, who saw features that were nicknamed blueberries, given that they were small and round. You can see round concretions beside the flower-like function in this image.
Curiosity rover obtained this Hand Lens severe close-up of among the rather uncommon and extremely little concretion features. This one has been called Blackthorn Salt. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Kevin M. Gill
The rover science group saw this feature previously this week and named it Blackthorn Salt. They utilized the rovers Mars Hand Lens Imager, called MAHLI, to take these close-up images.
Here you can see a 3-D model of the object, thanks to Simeon Schmauss:
Curiosity has in fact seen these types of functions in the past, which are called diagenetic crystal clusters. Diagenetic indicates the recombination or rearrangement of minerals, and these functions consist of three-dimensional crystal clusters, most likely made of a combination of minerals. Curiosity rover gotten this Hand Lens severe close-up of one of the extremely little and rather uncommon concretion features. The rover science team saw this function earlier this week and named it Blackthorn Salt.
Interest discovered another flower-like function back in 2013, and the Spirit rover found similar-looking rocks that were nicknamed cauliflower functions due to the fact that of their knobby protuberances.
” Cauliflower” shaped silica-rich rocks photographed by the Spirit Rover near the Home Plate rock development in Gusev Crater in 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Our thanks to Kevin Gill who processed the images, handled Sol 3397. See more terrific Curiosity images processed by Kevin at his Flickr page.
Originally released on Universe Today.