Curiosity spitting odd findings after Mars dust feast

slashgear.com ^ | Chris Davies

[BenLurkin]

NASA's Curiosity rover has been busy with its drill again, and analysis of the second sample of Martian rock is already turning up some unexpected conditions back when the red planet supported liquid water. Curiosity put its low-percussion-level drill into play for the first time last week, carving a chunk out of a site known as "Mojave 2" at the base of Mount Sharp, and feeding it in powder form into its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Turns out, even though the analysis isn't finished yet, there are already signs of a surprising amount of jarosite, to a degree that suggests Mars was - at least in parts - a whole lot more acidic than predicted by earlier testing.

[RegulatorCountry]

Dust feast? Yum.

[left that other site]

Mars Ping!

[Erik Latranyi]

More acidic?

I bet they burned coal.

[mcshot]

Good one - high sulfur type too.

[blueunicorn6]

“There’s oil in them thar hills.”

[jsanders2001]

Very cool photos of the Martian surface

[Celtic Conservative]

That would actually be a good thing. Some terraforming scientists have actually suggested that encouraging the greenhouse process would be a way to make the atmosphere more dense.

CC

[onedoug]

Very interesting.

Thanks for posting.

[dr_lew]

I was gonna say jarosite !-)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks left that other site. Panspermia ping.

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[Oatka]

There is an absolute dog of a 1960s Sci-Fi movie called "The Creeping Terror" that was ahead of its time. (The creature consisted of a bunch of guys crouched beneath an undulating carpet.)

This creature inhaled slow-moving earth-people at a pretty good rate, but it was only at the end, when the hero stood amid WWII surplus equipment in the "spaceship", that the voice-over revealed that the creature was dissolving the humans in order to analyze their components and was sending the info back to Mars.

Life imitates art - sometime it just takes a while.

[BenLurkin]

the creature was dissolving the humans in order to analyze their components and was sending the info back to Mars.

it was all just a misunderstanding.