NASA rover Curiosity finds more evidence of water on Mars

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

Last week, the rovers science team announced that analysis of powder from a drilled mudstone rock on Mars indicates past environmental conditions that were favourable for microbial life.

Additional findings suggest those conditions extended beyond the site of the drilling.

Using infrared-imaging capability of a camera on the rover and an instrument that shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have found more hydration of minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier.

The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) can also serve as a mineral-detecting and hydration-detecting tool, reported Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe.

''Some iron-bearing rocks and minerals can be detected and mapped using the Mastcam's near-infrared filters,'' he said.

Ratios of brightness in different Mastcam near-infrared wavelengths can indicate the presence of some hydrated minerals. The technique was used to check rocks in the ''Yellowknife Bay'' area where Curiosity's drill last month collected the first powder from the interior of a rock on Mars. Some rocks in Yellowknife Bay are crisscrossed with bright veins.

''With Mastcam, we see elevated hydration signals in the narrow veins that cut many of the rocks in this area. These bright veins contain hydrated minerals that are different from the clay minerals in the surrounding rock matrix,'' said Melissa Rice of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

The Russian-made Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument on Curiosity detects hydrogen beneath the rover. At the rover's very dry study area on Mars, the detected hydrogen is mainly in water molecules bound into minerals.

''We definitely see signal variation along the traverse from the landing point to Yellowknife Bay. More water is detected at Yellowknife Bay than earlier on the route. Even within Yellowknife Bay, we see significant variation,'' said DAN Deputy Principal Investigator Maxim Litvak of the Space Research Institute, Moscow.

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