Soft Disclosure | Earth-like Martian Past "The only ways on Earth that we know how to make these manganese materials involve atmospheric oxygen or microbes."

Soft Disclosure | Earth-like Martian Past "The only ways on Earth that we know how to make these manganese materials involve atmospheric oxygen or microbes." 

This scene shows NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at a location called "Windjana," where the rover found rocks containing manganese-oxide minerals, which require abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form.

In front of the rover are two holes from the rover's sample-collection drill and several dark-toned features that have been cleared of dust (see inset images). These flat features are erosion-resistant fracture fills containing manganese oxides. The discovery of these materials suggests the Martian atmosphere might once have contained higher abundances of free oxygen than it does now.

The rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera in April and May 2014 to take dozens of images that were combined into this self-portrait. A version of this portrait without the insets is at PIA18390.

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

  Source - NASA JPL

by NASA JPL

Chemicals found in Martian rocks by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover suggest the Red Planet once had more oxygen in its atmosphere than it does now.

Researchers found high levels of manganese oxides by using a laser-firing instrument on the rover. This hint of more oxygen in Mars' early atmosphere adds to other Curiosity findings -- such as evidence about ancient lakes -- revealing how Earth-like our neighboring planet once was.

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