“If it’s not coral, then what is it?” NASA scientists wondered.
The peculiar object turned out to be a small, light-colored, weathered stone. It was discovered inside Gale Crater on the Red Planet. The stone remarkably resembles coral found in Earth’s oceans, as reported by Live Science.
In a black-and-white image taken with the Remote Micro Imager—a high-resolution telescopic camera mounted on the rover—the stone, about 2.5-centimeter-wide, displays intricate branching structures. Later, NASA said Curiosity “has discovered numerous such stones formed under the influence of ancient water and billions of years of wind-driven sandblasting.”
What Did the Rover Team Report?
According to the researchers’ statement, coral-like rocks on Mars began forming billions of years ago when Mars still had water. Like Earth’s, Martian water was rich in dissolved minerals. That water seeped through tiny cracks in the rocks, gradually depositing minerals and forming solid “veins” inside. These veins create the strange branching structures of the coral-like object seen in the image.
Among other examples of unusual stones found on Mars is “Paposso,” a 5-centimeter-wide stone with a bizarre shape that Curiosity recently encountered. Additionally, there’s a tiny flower-shaped object that the rover photographed in Gale Crater back in 2022.
Mission Possible
Let’s remember that in 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, touching down in Gale Crater. This meteorite crater sits at the boundary between Mars’s southern highlands and its northern plains. The rover’s mission, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is to study the Martian surface and search for signs that Mars was once suitable for life.
So far, Curiosity has traveled about 35 kilometers across the 154-kilometer-wide crater. The rover’s journey is winding and slow, as it must stop to drill into rocks and collect samples.
The rover’s investigations have uncovered numerous pieces of evidence suggesting that Mars once had the potential for life. Among these are long carbon chains from rocks that are 3.7 billion years old and indications that a carbon cycle once existed on Mars.
Photo: pixabay.com, NASA
