Impressive discovery on Mars – crystals of pure sulfur discovered

NASA’s Curiosity rover has made an exciting discovery on Mars after uncovering yellow and green crystals of pure sulfur that scientists say have never been seen before in the mysterious Red Planet’s soil.

The groundbreaking discovery was made after Curiosity traveled over a pile of rocks to explore the meandering Geddes Vallis “channel,” which is believed to have been formed by water 3 billion years ago.

“I think this is the strangest and most unexpected discovery of the entire mission,” Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity program scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told CNN.

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“I have to say we were very lucky,” he said. “Not every rock has something interesting in it.”

According to the NYPost, operators spotted white rocks in the distance, and mission scientists wanted to investigate them further. On May 30, Vasavada and his team reviewed images from the rover that showed a shattered rock.

What they saw when they zoomed in was “exciting,” noting the “wonderful texture and color inside” of what initially appeared to be a typical Martian rock.

They were even more shocked when the analysis showed that it was pure sulfur.

Sulfur rocks are usually “beautiful, translucent, crystalline,” according to Vasavada, but after millions of years of sandblasting the exterior of the rocks, they have blended in with the rest of the orange Martian landscape.

Curiosity previously discovered a series of sulfates, or sulfur-containing salts that form when water evaporates. On Earth, pure sulfur only forms under extreme conditions, such as volcanic processes or in hot springs, CNN reported.

Scientists are now investigating what the presence of pure sulfur means for Mars and its cosmic history.

This discovery could give SpaceX CEO Musk more inspiration to achieve his goal of colonizing the Red Planet in the future.