Curiosity has Found the Mother Lode of Clay on the Surface of Mars

Curiosity at Mt. Sharp, Gale Crater, Mars. To the left of the rover are two drill holes into the rocks "Aberlady" and "Kilmarie." Curiosity found high concentrations of clay in both rocks. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Clay is a big deal on Mars because it often forms in contact with water. Find clay, and you’ve usually found evidence of water. And the nature, history, and current water budget on Mars are all important to understanding that planet, and if it ever supported life.

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This is Where Mars 2020 Rover is Heading. From this Picture, I Think You Can Guess Why

Jezero Crater on Mars is the landing site for NASA's Mars 2020 rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Get used to hearing the name “Jezero Crater.” It’s the landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The 2020 rover is slated to launch in July 2020, and will land at Jezero Crater in February, 2021.

It’s pretty easy to see why NASA chose Jezero Crater for the next rover in their Mars Exploration Program (MEP). MEP is NASA’s long-term plan to explore Mars robotically. It includes rovers like Spirit, Opportunity, and MSL, the InSight Lander, orbiting spacecraft, and soon the 2020 rover.

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This Strange Feature on Mars was Probably the Result of an Ancient Volcanic Explosion

An olivine-rich deposit near Nili Fossae on the Martian surface. Image Credit: NASA/MRO

A strange feature on the surface of Mars has kept scientists guessing about its origin. It’s a surface deposit of a mineral which is more common in the interiors of planets. A new study shows that this interior mineral was probably brought to the surface by an ancient explosive volcano.

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Don’t Forget, Curiosity’s Sister Rover is Flying to Mars in 2020

Engineers testing the spacecraft that will carry the Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Next summer, NASA will be sending it’s Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet. In addition to being the second rover to go as part of the Mars Exploration Program, it will be one of eight functioning missions exploring the atmosphere and surface of the planet. These include the recently-arrived InSight lander, the Curiosity rover – Mars 2020s sister-mission – and
the Opportunity rover (which NASA recently lost contact with and retired).

As the launch date gets closer and closer, NASA is busily making all the final preparations for this latest member of the Mars exploration team. In addition to selecting a name (which will be selected from an essay contest), this includes finalizing the spacecraft that will take the rover on its seven-month journey to Mars. Recently, NASA posted images of the spacecraft being inspected at NASA JPL’s Space Simulator Facility (SFF) in Pasadena, California.

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The Global Dust Storm that Ended Opportunity Helped Teach us how Mars Lost its Water

Mars in 2001. On the left, no global dust storm. On the right, global dust storm. Image Credit: By Jim Secosky picked out this NASA image NASA/JPL/MSSS - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA03170_fig1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65809875
Mars in 2001. On the left, no global dust storm. On the right, global dust storm. Image Credit: By Jim Secosky picked out this NASA image NASA/JPL/MSSS - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA03170_fig1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65809875

The enduring, and maybe endearing, mystery around Mars is what happened to its water? We can say with near-certainty now, thanks to the squad of Mars rovers and orbiters, that Mars was once much wetter. In fact that planet may have had an ocean that covered a third of the surface. But what happened to it all?

As it turns out, the global dust storms that envelop Mars, and in particular the most recent one that felled the Opportunity rover, may offer an explanation.

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Curiosity has Finally Sampled a Clay-Rich Region on Mars

A mast-cam mosaic image of the so-called "clay-bearing unit". After almost seven years on Mars, MSL Curiosity has finally been able to drill into the clay-rich region. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
A mast-cam mosaic image of the so-called "clay-bearing unit". After almost seven years on Mars, MSL Curiosity has finally been able to drill into the clay-rich region. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

It’s hard to believe that MSL Curiosity has been on Mars for almost seven years. But it has, and during that time, the rover has explored Gale Crater and Mt. Sharp, the central peak inside the crater. And while it has used its drill multiple times to take rock samples, this is the first sample it’s gathered from the so-called ‘clay unit.’

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Scientists are Trying to Figure Out Why InSight’s “Mole” Can’t Dig Any Deeper

The HP3 model in its test bed in Bremen. Image Credit: DLR.
The HP3 model in its test bed in Bremen. Image Credit: DLR.

Engineers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) are busy working with a replica InSight Lander to see if they can understand what’s blocking the lander’s mole.

The mole is the short name for the lander’s Heat Probe, which is hammering its way into the Martian surface. The Heat Probe is actually called the HP3, or Heat and Physical Properties Package. It’s designed to work it’s way as far as 5 meters (16.4 ft.) into the soil, where it will measure the heat flowing from the interior of the planet. Those measurements will tell scientists a lot about the structure of Mars, and how rocky planets formed.

But as reported last month, the probe is being blocked at about 30 cm (1 ft.)

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Two Solar Eclipses Seen From the Surface of Mars by Curiosity

The Martian moon Phobos as it crossed in front of the Sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sunday, March 26, 2019 (Sol 2359). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Ever since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, it has provided NASA scientists with invaluable data about the planet’s past, as well as some breathtaking images of the planet’s surface. Much like its predecessors, the Spirit and Opportunity rover, many of these images have shown what it is like to look up at the sky from the surface of Mars and witness celestial events.

Of these events, one of the most intriguing has to be the many Martian solar eclipses that have taken place since the rover’s landed. Last month, the Curiosity rover witnessed two eclipses as the moons of Phobos and Deimos both passed in front of the Sun. These latest eclipses will allow scientists to fine-tune their predictions about Mars’ satellites and how they orbit the Red Planet.

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Mars Express Saw the Same Methane Spike that Curiosity Detected from the Surface of Mars

Mars Express, which is now studying Phobos.
An artist's illustration of the Mars Express Orbiter above Mars. Its MARSIS instrument has been updated so it can study the moon Phobos. Image Credit: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mars: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

If you’re not a chemist, an astrobiologist, or a scientist of any sort, and that includes most of us, then a tiny, almost imperceptible whiff of methane in the Martian atmosphere might seem like no big deal. But it is, gentle humans. It is.

Why?

Because it could be a signal that some living process is at work. And even we non-scientists have wondered at some point if the only life in the Solar System, or maybe in the entire Universe, is confined here on Earth.

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