This May 22, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) in NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the "Marias Pass" area where a lower and older geological unit of mudstone -- the pale zone in the center of the image -- lies in contact with an overlying geologi (Photo : NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover recently discovered some rocks with unexpected high concentrations of silica than any of its previous rocks analyzed, since landing on the Red Planet three years ago.
According to team scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, these silica laden rocks are a combination of silicon and oxygen that also makes up 90 percent of the composition of other rocks that were analyzed.
According to Albert Yen, a scientist from the Curiosity rover's team at JPL, this concentration of silica can be boosted while being filtered from other ingredients that left silica behind or transporting silica someplace but these processes will involve water.
Yen believes that acidic water could have removed other substances and left silica behind. On the other hand, neural or alkaline water could have transported silica that already dissolved and left silica remnants. Scientists are now examining and analyzing this silica process on Mars and if this can be proven, more information can lead to ancient Martian wet environments.
Previously, NASA's Spirit rover, traced some sulfuric acid on a different region on Mars and this complicates things as Curiosity also discovered silica in the mineral form of tridymite in a site known as "Buckskin". Unlike silica, tridymite is rarely found on Earth and was never detected on Mars before.
Tridymite on Earth is usually formed with igneous or metamorphic rocks, that are created with extreme heat however Curiosity's discoveries indicate that they come from lakebed deposits. More importantly, tridymite is also found in volcanic deposits with rich silica content on Earth however, on Mars, these have lower amounts of the substance.
NASA scientists now believe that there could be evidence of volcanic activity and magma evolution on the Red Planet. Using the onboard scientific tool of Curiosity known as the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, the laser blasted the rocks and detected abundant traces of this element where the rover has been studying the region known as Mount Sharp, during a journey towards a formation called Marias Pass.
