NASA's Curiosity rover finds image of bizzare flower-shaped rock on Mars made of minerals

While treading into the barren Martian land, NASA's Curiosity rover has stumbled upon a strange rock that looks like a flower. The enticing photograph of the object was shared by Curiosity deputy project scientist Abigail Fraeman who revealed what this microscopic image really is about. Taking to Twitter, she revealed that the enticing object is actually a mineral formation that resulted from the mineral precipitating from water.

"Your Friday moment of zen: A beautiful new microscopic image from @MarsCuriosity shows teeny, tiny delicate structures that formed by mineral precipitating from water," Fraeman wrote in her tweet. In a second tweet, the scientist said that the mission team has found such structures in the past. These structures are the most prominent at the Pahrump Hills region on Mars and, according to Fraeman, these features were made of salts called sulfates. 

Explaining the new picture, The Curiosity mission team said that it was created by stitching two to eight separate images captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard the rover. The team informed that the image was merged into one to reduce the number of images sent to Earth. "Because the MAHLI focus merge is performed on Mars, it also serves as a means to reduce the number of images sent back to Earth. Each focus merge produces two images: a color, best-focus product and a black-and-white image that scientists can use to estimate focus position for each element of the best focus product," the team said in a report. 

Curiosity snaps clouds drifting in the Martian sky

In its recent milestone, the rover had captured images of the clouds on Mars using its navigation camera which was then converted into 8-frame GIFs. According to the mission team, the images were taken on December 12, 2021, the 3,325th Martian day, or sol, of the mission and they show shadows of the clouds drifting across the terrain. Moreover, the clouds were calculated drifting at a speed of nearly 80 kilometres and are extremely cold, suggesting they are composed of carbon dioxide ice instead of water ice clouds.

Image: Twitter/@abbyfrae