NASA’s Curiosity rover accidentally smashed open a rock on Mars and found something ‘unexpected’ inside.
The US space agency sent the car-sized Curiosity rover into space back in 2011.
Since then, it’s been roaming around the Red Planet and has made some very interesting discoveries, including challenging a long-held belief about water on Mars.
And back in May 2024, it made another incredible discovery – but this time it was completely by accident.
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The Curiosity rover found something that ‘shouldn’t be there’
Curiosity and the sibling rover Perseverance, which was launched in 2021, have helped to provide scientists with incredible new information about Mars.
Samples from the rover have been hailed as the ‘best proof’ of life on Mars, and footage has given us the clearest footage of the planet that we’ve ever seen.
NASA
But one of Curosity’s most surprising discoveries was actually an accident.
While the rover was out and about one day, it inadvertently smashed into a Martian rock, cracking it in two and revealing a surprise inside.
Scientists back on Earth were able to take a look at the rock and found that it was full of glowing yellow-colored rocks that were later identified as pure sulfur crystals.
Sulfur crystals had never been spotted on Mars’s surface before and were ‘unexpected’, according to NASA.
The rover then went on to find ‘an entire field of bright rocks’ that looked very similar to the one it had smashed open.
“Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said at the time.
“It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”
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It’s not the only time a Martian rock has shocked scientists
The Perseverance rover has also made some very interesting discoveries when it comes to Martian rocks.
In 2024, the rover was out exploring the the Jezero crater when it took some incredible images of blue-colored boulders scattered across the surface of Mars.
Hidden among the sea of blue rocks was a pure white rock that suggests Mars’s early crust is more complex than was once thought.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
And just last year, Perseverance spotted a black-and-white striped rock that was ‘unlike any seen on Mars before’.
The rover was moving through a pebble-strewn part of the Red Planet when scientists saw the zebra-esque rock in the background.
At the time, NASA said its team had ‘noticed an increased variety of rocks’ and suggested they could be ancient stones and boulders that had been uplifted by the Jezero impact and brought to the surface.
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