NASA's Curiosity rover spots another bizarre-shaped delicate rock on Mars

NASA's decade-old Curiosity rover has spotted another bizarre feature while exploring Mars. During its recent observation, the rover has imaged what looks like a dust-coloured plant stemming out of a rock on the red planet. According to the SETI Institute's Twitter post, the strange-looking feature is "most likely the cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock." This finding is significant as sedimentary rocks are formed from pre-existing rocks or pieces of once-living organisms. The SETI institute further explained that the rest of the rock where the small pillars are "was made of softer material and was eroded away."

Notably, this is not the first time the Curiosity rover has come across a surprising discovery of mineral rocks in the Gale crater, its exploration site. Earlier in February this year, Curiosity's project scientist Abigail Fraeman shared an exciting picture featuring a flower-shaped rock. 

Curiosity spots flower-shaped rock on Mars

Taking to Twitter, Fraeman explained how the flower-shaped structure came to be. She said that the microscopic image features a delicate structure which was formed by minerals precipitating from water. In a second tweet, the scientist said that the mission team has found such structures in the past too. These structures are the most prominent in the Pahrump Hills region on Mars and, according to Fraeman, these features were made of salts called sulfates. 

Currently, the rover is exploring the red planet at 'Mirador Butte', a location on Mount Sharp, also called the Aeolis Mons within the Gale crater. In a recent mission update, the Curiosity team revealed that climbing the terrain of Mount Sharp is extremely difficult and that the rover's Mast Camera or MastCam "is very busy" in this landscape. The mission team revealed that it is getting a bit dusty at the Gale crater but Curiosity is headed uphill for further investigations. "Our environment and atmosphere group keeps monitoring the atmosphere with observations of atmosphere opacity each sol (Martian day) of the plan," the mission team said in a blog.

Image: Twitter/@SETIInstitute