Opportunity, NASA’s long-lived Martian robotic workhorse, has started a new round of studies at a place unlike anything seen before on Mars, scientists said this week.
Poised on the rim of a large crater called "Endeavour," Opportunity has been examining a rock with an unusually high concentration of zinc, among other targets. On Earth, such rocks usually mean they’ve spent time in water, typically warm water.
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The Martian rock is basically basalt, a common volcanic rock, which was cemented together from fragments of other rocks shattered by an impact, for example. But it has significantly more zinc than any other rock studied by Opportunity or Spirit, its now-dead sister rover.
“We may be dealing with a situation where water has percolated or flowed -- somehow moved through these rocks, maybe as vapor, maybe as liquid, don’t know yet -- but has enhanced the zinc concentration in the rock to levels far in excess of anything that we have seen on Mars before,” lead rover scientist Steve Squyres, with Cornell University, told reporters.
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Scientists plan to look for other zinc-rich rocks to see if the concentrations are the same, as well as probe for other minerals likewise tied to water.
“We’ve got some strange stuff going on, but we’re not ready to draw any firm conclusions,” Squyres said.
Image: False color view of a portion of the west rim of Endeavour Crater, the newest digs for NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity. The image is a combination of exposures taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera on Aug. 6. The crater contains rocks and deposits older than any Opportunity has studied since its arrival on Mars in January 2004. Credit: NASA
Tags: Impact Craters, Mars, NASA, Robotics
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