There is increasing evidence of water on Mars and a new discovery from NASA’s Curiosity rover, who has found opal gems in Gale Crater on the Martian surfaceincreases the records of the vital liquid on the red planet.
As he recalls a report published on the website of spaceMartian water ice is abundant at the poles, but less so at the equator, where Gale Crater is located.
The Curiosity rover, which is currently exploring the crater, had previously sent back data from its DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons), which were then analyzed by a team of researchers. In both older and more recent images, they noted fracture halos, rings of light-colored sediment, which stood out because of their color, evidence showing that the light rock was actually opal.
The importance of finding the opal
Because opal, a mineraloid that is similar in composition to quartz, is predominantly composed of water and silicathe presence of this mineral could mean that there was once enough water there to possibly make the depths of these cracks habitable.
In addition, it is possible that one day the opal currently on Mars could be harvested to obtain the water stored within it, which offers a source of water for any manned mission to the planet.
Mars is a barren and ravaged planet, so the amount of radiation on the planet’s surface makes it inhospitable to life as we know it. However, within the subsurface fractures, there is a much darker environment better protected from the intense radiation.
The water-rich opals within these fractures make their discovery even more exciting, as research physicist Travis Gabriel, formerly of the University of Arizona, explains: “To see that these fracture networks were so widespread and probably chock full of opal was amazing”.
“Given the extensive fracture networks discovered in Gale Crater, it is reasonable to expect that these potentially habitable subsurface conditions will extend to many other regions of Gale Crater as well, and perhaps to other regions of Mars. These environments would have formed long after the ancient Gale Crater Lakes dried up.”.
