Photo by: Marjorie A. Chan, University of Utah
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Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS
When some scientists first saw these strange beads of hematite, they seemed
like "blueberries" embedded in a "muffin" of martian soil. The first outcrop
rock Opportunity examined up close was finely-layered, buff-colored and in
the process of being eroded by windblown sand. Embedded in it and on top of
it like blueberries in a muffin were little spherical grains.
Black and
white microscopic images like this one taken on Opportunity’s 14th sol on
Mars show the gray spheres which have weathered out of the rock and are
resting in the darker soil. On first discovery, scientists didn’t know if
the spheres formed when molten rock was sprayed into the air by a volcano or
a meteor impact, or if they were accumulated material, formed by minerals
coming out of solution as water diffused through rock. Through intense
investigations with the spectrometers, scientists were able to determine
that the blueberries are rich in the mineral hematite, which on Earth most
often forms in the presence of liquid water. These blueberries helped
scientists determine that the rocks at Opportunity's landing site had been
soaked in liquid water.
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