This March 18, 2015, view from the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a network of two-tone mineral veins at an area called "Garden City" on lower Mount Sharp. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Posted on 04/02/2015 12:08:37 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Currently studying the “Pahrump Hills” region at the base of Mount Sharp in the center of Gale Crater, this new view snapped by Curiosity on March 18 shows a work site Curiosity’s mission scientists call “Garden City.” This area is interesting as it shows two-tone mineral veins protruding from the surrounding rock.
The tough mineral veins were formed in Mars’ ancient wet past and they are sticking out of the rock up to 6 centimeters (2.5 inches) high. This means that the veins formed within the rock and the softer surrounding bedrock has since eroded away.
When comparing the geology of this particular area with the rocks that Curiosity has analysed in lower sections of Mount Sharp, a story emerges Mars’ ancient geological history.
“Some of (the mineral veins) look like ice-cream sandwiches: dark on both edges and white in the middle,” said Linda Kah, Curiosity science-team member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory news release. “These materials tell us about secondary fluids that were transported through the region after the host rock formed.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
What a contrast the rover is to the Viking landers of the seventies. Back then, an ambulatory Martian could have walked by the lander and we’d have never known about it due to Viking’s lack of photographic sophistication. Being able to roam and envision on-the-ground Mars is one of western civ’s greatest accomplishments to date.
I wonder what the scale is on that?
The pictured landscape is very Skyrim-ish.
Four full paragraphs and not a damn word about what minerals the “jackpot” is. I’m getting sick of these articles where the title is nothing but hype. All designed to get you to click the link and get you to spend enough time there for a gang of popup adds to explode across the page or in the margins.
Crap.
2.5 inches high?
The article says the ridges are 2.5 inches high.
Because they don't know. They have just imaged the mineral veins, not analyzed them.
Judging by appearances (always dangerous), they are likely to be some type of carbonate (like calcite) or evaporite (like salt).
ping
I wonder how intense the effort to travel to Mars would become it there were found to be large veins of gold and silver upon it?
Clearly the ruins of Atlantis...
oops, I've said to much. Brb, somebody's at the doo
Yes, but what we really want to know is:
Is thar gold up in them thar hills?
Crashed Vorlon or Shadow ship obviously.
Looks like mud cracks that one would find in a playa(shallow lake that floods and dries) that has dried out. Cracks could have been filled in with wind blown sediments, buried and then have mineral replacement. You can find the same thing here on earth
Its heavy...how you gonna bring it here?
No big mystery, look like obvious mud cracks to me too.
I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it!
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