(NewsNation) — Call it Curiosity serendipity: the accidental discovery of pure sulfur on Mars in a place that scientists didn’t expect it to be.
It happened in May when NASA’s nearly one-ton Curiosity rover ran over a rock, which cracked open, revealing yellow sulfur crystals.
“Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” said Curiosity’s project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it.”
Curiosity has been exploring a region of Mars that’s rich with sulfates. But NASA says this is the first time the rover has found pure, or elemental, sulfur.
Sulfur is an essential element for all life as we know it, so the accidental discovery of sulfur where it was not expected on Mars is considered a major victory for Curiosity. For a decade, the rover has been exploring places on Mars’ terrain that could have provided the nutrients needed for life – if it ever existed there.
NASA’s next step is to figure out how sulfur came to be where it was found in the Gediz Vallis Channel, a valley that may have been formed by liquid water and debris billions of years ago.
Meanwhile, Curiosity is heading to its next destination: a boulder labeled “Mammoth Lakes,” which may shed more light on the presence of sulfur on that part of the planet.
