NASA’s Curiosity Rover Solves Ancient Mystery on Mars

Over the past 13 years, the four-wheeled Curiosity rover has traveled approximately 21 miles (34 kilometers) across the Martian surface to gather clues about the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet. A recent discovery by the metallic explorer could provide an answer to the longstanding question of what happened to Mars’ atmosphere billions of years ago, and how the planet may have transformed from a wet, life-friendly world to a dry and arid desert. The Curiosity rover recently uncovered large deposits of carbon within sulfate-rich layers of Mount Sharp in Mars’ impact basin, Gale Crater. In a paper published this month in the journal Science, data from three of Curiosity’s drill sites revealed an abundance of siderite—an iron carbonate mineral that had been a missing piece in the puzzle of Mars’ wet, habitable past. Water and carbon dioxide react to form carbonate minerals. Based on the theory of Mars’ potentially habitable past, the planet may have once had a thick, carbo ... Read full article.