MARS (/TOPICS/MARS/) 2 MIN READ
NASA’s Curiosity Rover May Have Solved Mars’ Missing
Carbonate Mystery
April 17, 2025
(https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/original_images/1-PIA26554-Curiosity_Surveys_the_Ubajara_Sampling_Site_4-Figure_A.jpg)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover sees its tracks receding into the distance at a site nicknamed “Ubajara” on April 30, 2023. This site is where Curiosity made the discovery of
siderite, a mineral that may help explain the fate of the planet’s thicker ancient atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The discovery of a mineral called siderite may help solve the mystery of what happened to the Red Planet’s carbon dioxide-
rich atmosphere.
New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover could provide an answer to the mystery of what happened to the planet’s
ancient atmosphere and how Mars has evolved over time.
Researchers have long believed that Mars once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and liquid water on the planet’s
surface. That carbon dioxide and water should have reacted with Martian rocks to create carbonate minerals. Until now,
though, rover missions and near-infrared spectroscopy analysis from Mars-orbiting satellites haven’t found the amounts of
carbonate on the planet’s surface predicted by this theory.
Reported in an April paper (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado9966) in Science, data from three of Curiosity’s
drill sites revealed the presence of siderite, an iron carbonate mineral, within the sulfate-rich rocky layers
(https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-mars-rover-reaches-long-awaited-salty-region) of Mount Sharp in Mars’ Gale
Crater.
“The discovery of abundant siderite in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our
understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars,” said Benjamin Tutolo, assistant professor at the University
of Calgary, Canada, and lead author of the paper.
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To study the Red Planet’s chemical and mineral makeup, Curiosity drills 1.2-1.6 inches (3-4 centimeters) down into the
subsurface, then drops the powdered rock samples into its CheMin instrument. The instrument, led by NASA’s Ames Research
Center in California’s Silicon Valley, uses X-ray diffraction to analyze rocks and soil. CheMin’s data was processed and analyzed
by scientists at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in
Houston.
“Drilling through the layered Martian surface is like going through a history book,” said Thomas Bristow, research scientist at
NASA Ames and coauthor of the paper. “Just a few centimeters down gives us a good idea of the minerals that formed at or
close to the surface around 3.5 billion years ago.”
The discovery of this carbonate mineral in rocks beneath the surface suggests that carbonate may be masked by other
minerals in near-infrared satellite analysis. If other sulfate-rich layers across Mars also contain carbonates, the amount of stored
carbon dioxide would be a fraction of that needed in the ancient atmosphere to create conditions warm enough to support
liquid water. The rest could be hidden in other deposits or have been lost to space over time.
In the future, missions or analyses of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm these findings and help us better
understand the planet’s early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost.
Curiosity, part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio, was built by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which
is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in
Washington.
For more information on Curiosity, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/ (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/)
News Media Contact
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
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Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Written by Tara Friesen
Ames Research Center
2025-054
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