Sharmila Kuthunur is a Seattle-based science journalist covering astronomy, astrophysics and space exploration. Follow her on X @skuthunur
A collection of rocks scattered on an ancient shoreline on Mars might indicate that the Red Planet was once far more Earth-like than scientists previously thought.
The only known ways to produce manganese oxide, however, involve either abundant oxygen or microbial life. But there isn't strong evidence for the former on Mars, and none for the latter, leaving scientists puzzled by how the chemical formed in the newfound rocks. The Curiosity rover came across the heavily eroded rocks while trekking through the middle of Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide ancient lake bed that the rover has been exploring since 2012. The rover's ChemCam instrument"sniffed" the manganese oxide within the rocks by vaporizing tiny bits with a laser and then analyzing the resulting cloud of plasma.
"That means we're at the shore of the lake or near the shore of the lake," Gasda said. He noted that this interpretation is uncertain due to limited data, because Curiosity drove past the region just once."That made the interpretation really challenging, but this is our best hypothesis," he added.
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