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curiosity silica

The starting time manned mission to Mars is still a goal for the futurity, so the best we can do to explore the Red Planet is to send robots. Curiosity has proven itself to be a expert stand-in for boots on the ground, though. Later on rolling farther than whatsoever rover before it, Curiosity has establish something new on Mars — silica. At that place's silica everywhere on Earth, just we haven't seen much of it on Mars before at present, and that's what makes this find so of import.

Our story starts 7 months ago when Curiosity was passing through an area called Marias Laissez passer. It stopped and used its ChemCam laser to drill into the rock to perform a mineral analysis, as information technology had washed at many points since landing on Mars in 2022. The data was caused and Marvel went forth its way upward Mount Sharp. So, NASA did something it nearly never does — it turned the rover effectually and sent it back to do more than science in Marias Laissez passer.

Information technology was the presence of silica in the sample that got scientists so excited. That sample analyzed past Curiosity showed concentrations of upward to 90 percentage silica, which is a big alter from seeing just traces of silica in all previous samples. Curiosity spent the side by side iv months checking various areas around Marias Laissez passer, which is where two unlike sediment layers converge, to run across how all-encompassing the silica enrichment was. It turns out, pretty extensive.

marias pass

The presence of silica is of import because it points to the presence of water in Mars' geologic past. Of class, we now know that Mars has a little flowing water, and that it had large lakes and flowing rivers in the past. Curiosity has found the dried lake and river beds, after all. All those dry lake beds only tell u.s. there was water, not whether or not it would have been suitable for life. The water could take been too salty or acidic for life to develop, and it'due south hard to know what conditions were similar millions of years agone. A loftier concentration of silica could, however, assistance us draw some conclusions about the nature of Martian h2o from ages agone.

Silica in these concentrations would probably finish up there because of other minerals dissolving (thanks to the acidic surroundings) or the deposition of silica (neutral pH). Silica precipitates out of water at pH 7 or 8, so the layer of strata in Marias Pass and surrounding areas could accept been platonic for living organisms. Scientists are still examining the data from Marvel's stop-off in Marias Pass in hopes of determining how the silica got there. The results might modify the way we imagine an ancient Martian environment.