Curiosity Finds Martian Mountains Taste Acidic

[Sagan]

NASA's Curiosity rover has taken a second bite out of its target mountain, this time finding that Mount Sharp can 'taste' a lot more acidic than experts expected.

After perusing around the mountain back in November, Curiosity finally picked out its next most promising drill spot. There, the rover "sunk its teeth" into, so to speak, the rock known as Mojave 2.

The rover tentatively used a new low-percussion-level drilling technique to collect sample powder from the spot - almost like sampling the sauce on your food to determine if you're going to like it.

And what the rover found was that Mojave 2 tasted like nothing it had sampled before.

Back in September, the rover sunk its teeth into a lower outcrop around Mount Sharp called Pahrump Hills, at a spot named "Confidence Hills." That was the drilling robot's first true taste test, but back then NASA's Mars Science Laboratory team saw results that were pretty much expected for the Red Planet's dusty environment - not so for Mojave 2.

"Our initial assessment of the newest sample indicates that it has much more jarosite (an oxidized mineral containing iron and sulfur that forms in acidic environments) than Confidence Hills," David Vaniman, the Deputy Principal Investigator for the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument on Curiosity, explained in a statement.

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http://www.natureworldnews.com/artic...ste-acidic.htm

[Chantellabella]

Why is the rover eating my planet?????!!!! Oh the humanity!!!!

[Ironman]

The software I test actually designed that rover. It's neat to see what it is accomplishing. The rock powder is gray and almost looks wet!

[Chantellabella]

The software I test actually designed that rover. It's neat to see what it is accomplishing. The rock powder is gray and almost looks wet!

That's awesome, Ironman! It must be cool to be a part of some amazing world-wide thing.

I once met a guy who wrote a children's book and just invited him to be at one of our children's programs. I didn't think much of it after that until I found out he was a world-wide doctor directly involved in the first warnings of the Ebola crisis. It's just so weird that you talk to someone who's like a movie guy who saves the planet.

So that's really neat that you get to do stuff like that. It's got to be a cool job, right?

[Ironman]

That's awesome, Ironman! It must be cool to be a part of some amazing world-wide thing.

I once met a guy who wrote a children's book and just invited him to be at one of our children's programs. I didn't think much of it after that until I found out he was a world-wide doctor directly involved in the first warnings of the Ebola crisis. It's just so weird that you talk to someone who's like a movie guy who saves the planet.

So that's really neat that you get to do stuff like that. It's got to be a cool job, right?

It gets kinda stressful sometimes with deadlines and workload. We have all kinds of customers, not just space - cars, planes, ships, cameras, copiers, etc.

[Sagan]

The software I test actually designed that rover. It's neat to see what it is accomplishing. The rock powder is gray and almost looks wet!

That's awesome John. I are jelly!