Using Sulfur Crystals on Mars To Make New Discoveries
MIE Professor Moneesh Upmanyu says the recent discovery of pure sulfur on Mars—a first for the Mars Science Laboratory mission—could lead to more discoveries as the sulfur crystals may provide information on how the surface of Mars evolved over time and help scientists reconstruct the history of the planet.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Alena Kuzub. Main photo: NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove over a rock cracking it open and revealing something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals. NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Discovery of pure sulfur on Mars might reveal the red planet’s hidden secrets, expert says
It was another workday for Curiosity—a NASA Mars rover—on the cold and lonely red planet, when it crushed another rock under its wheel.
What was found inside stunned NASA scientists. The exposed yellow crystals were pure sulfur, a first for the Mars Science Laboratory mission.
Curiosity had made similar discoveries before, but all were sulfur-based salts left behind as water dried up on this part of Mars billions of years ago.
Moneesh Upmanyu, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and an expert on crystal growth, was shocked by the discovery of pure sulfur on Mars. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Although the discovery happened at the end of May, NASA did not reveal this information until July, astonishing the broader scientific community.
“I was shocked,” says Moneesh Upmanyu, a Northeastern University professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and an expert on crystal growth. “Usually sulfur exists as a compound with hydrogen and oxygen.”
Sulfur crystals can be synthesized in a lab, he says, by vaporizing a very saturated solution of sulfur and an organic solvent.
On Earth, sulfur is mined from pure sulfur deposits found in Louisiana, Texas, Canada and Mexico, and it can also be found near high-pressure, high-temperature environments, such as hot springs, volcanoes and hydrothermal vents under the sea where seawater meets magma in the cracks in the seabed. As magma comes out, Upmanyu says, it forms beautiful crystals.
Small forms of life, microorganisms, tend to live around these crystals, because they use minerals for chemosynthesis to produce energy instead of photosynthesis since the sunlight doesn’t reach such depth.
Curiosity reached the planet in August 2012 and set out to determine whether Mars had ever had the right environmental conditions to support microbes. It did find other chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News