Study: Explosive volcanic eruption produces rare minerals on Mars
Planetary scientists from Rice University, NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the California Institute of Technology have answers to a mystery that has baffled the Mars research community since NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered a mineral called tridymite in Gale Crater in 2016. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this low-angle self-portrait at the location where it drilled rock on July 30, 2015, producing a powder (seen in the foreground) that was later confirmed to contain the rare mineral tridymite. (Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) Tridymite is a very rare form of high-temperature, low-pressure quartz on Earth, and it’s not immediately clear how the concentrated chunks ended up in craters. Gale Crater was chosen as Curiosity’s landing site because of the possibility that it once harbored liquid water, and Curiosity found evidence confirming Gale Crater was a lake as recently as 1 billion years ago. “The discovery of tridymite in mudstone at Ga...