The finding in Garden City indicates that water flowed through the rocks on the Red Planet's surface long after the lake in Gale Crater tried up.
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has found two-tone veins of minerals that suggest water once flowed through rock in the middle of the Gale Crater while climbing Mt. Sharp.
The findings indicate that water flowed even after the lake that once filled the crater had dried up, creating a very different image of what the Red Planet’s watery past had looked like, and further indicating that microbial life could have found a suitable home in such an environment, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
Linda Kah, a sedimentary geologist at the University of Tennessee and a member of the Curiosity team, said that the finding helps scientists understand the chemistry of the rocks as well as the fluids that have been on Mars for eons, according to the report.
The deposits, which were found at a spot known as Garden City about 39 feet above the lower edge of the Pahrump Hills at the basal layer of the 3-mile-tall Mt. Sharp, likely formed when fluid flowed through the cracks in the rock, leaving behind minerals. The deposits create 2.5-inch ridges above the rock surface.
Veins of minerals have typically been light-colored on Mars, but these veins are dark, looking more like such deposits on Earth that are often created by salty water, according to the report.
The dark veins are right next to the white veins, creating the appearance of an ice cream sandwich and providing clues on how water affected certain rocks during certain eras. The mineral veins provide a snapshot of an era in the history of Mars.
Some dark veins are chemically very different from other dark veins, which Kah called an “exciting” find that adds more complexity for scientists to figure out.
Curiosity first landed on Mars back in 2012 and has been traversing the bare wasteland ever since, looking for signs of the chemical ingredients for life as well as indications of water. The rover produced evidence that there was a lake that drained and filled again as the years passed.
If this is the case, it may mean that microbial life lived for a time — the Holy Grail of discoveries that scientists are hoping to find.
