NASA’s Curiosity Rover Spots Bizarre-Looking Network of Martian Mineral Ridges

A bizarre-looking network of Martian mineral ridges has been spotted by NASA's Curiosity rover. According to team of scientists, the two-tone veins have indicated that there were separate stretches of time during the wet situations in the area that Curiosity is studying at present.

The researchers said the ridges rise as high as 2.5 inches above the level of the bedrock at a site nicknamed Garland City. Rock samples that drilled from three targets lower on the mountain in the past seven months have been examined by Curiosity. A different mineral composition has been found involving a silica mineral named cristobalite in the latest sample.

"Some of them look like ice-cream sandwiches: dark on both edges and white in the middle. These materials tell us about secondary fluids that were transported through the region after the host rock formed", said Linda Kah, a Curiosity team member at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

The two-tone veins are at the site nicknamed Garland City. Bright veins, made up of calcium sulfate, have been found by Curiosity at many previous locations. According to the researchers the dark material that preserved offers a chance to know more.

According to Kah, minimum two secondary fluids have left evidence. Kah said that they would like to know more about the chemistry of the different fluids and the sequence of events. The site, Garland City is about 39 feet higher than the bottom edge of the 'Pahrump Hills'.

Six months have been consumed by the Curiosity mission in order to examine the first 33 feet of elevation at Pahrump Hills. David Blake of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California said that they have investigated Pahrump Hills in the method a field geologist would, examining the whole outcrop first to select the best samples to gather.