NASA’s Curiosity rover accidentally discovered pure sulfur crystals on Mars

NASA scientists say pure sulfur was found on Mars for the first time after the Curiosity rover inadvertently discovered a cluster of yellow crystals while passing over a rock. And it seems the area is full of it. It’s an unexpected discovery – although sulfur-containing minerals have been observed on the Red Planet, elemental sulfur itself has never been seen there before. “It forms only under a narrow range of conditions that scientists have not associated with the history of this location,” according to .

Curiosity opened the rock on May 30 while driving through a region known as the Gediz Vallis channel, where similar rocks have been seen throughout. The canal is believed to have been carved by flows of water and debris long ago. “Finding a boulder field made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist. “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting.”

After locating the yellow crystals, the team later used a camera on Curiosity’s robotic arm to get a closer look. The rover then collected a sample from a different rock nearby, as the pieces of rock it broke off were too fragile to drill through. Curiosity is equipped with instruments that allow it to analyze the composition of rocks and soil, and NASA says its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) confirmed it found elemental sulfur.