NASA makes ‘shocking’ discovery on Mars

By Dean Murray

Scientists say they have made a "shocking" discovery on Mars.

NASA's Perseverance Science Team was "astonished by a strange rock" comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres - some with tiny pinholes.

Dubbing them "Shocking Spherules", the space agency has announced: "The team is now working hard to understand their origin."

Earlier this month the Perseverance rover arrived at a location on the Red Planet called Broom Point on the Jezero crater rim.

Here, a series of light- and dark-toned bands were visible from orbit, and just last week the rover successfully abraded and sampled one of the light-toned beds.

"It was from this sampling workspace where Perseverance spied a very strange texture in a nearby rock," says NASA.

The rock, named St. Pauls Bay by the team, is made up of mysterious dark gray spheres.

NASA says: "Some of these occurred as more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others possessed angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments.

"Some spheres even possessed tiny pinholes! What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes?"

This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars. In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spotted so-called, "Martian Blueberries", and since then, the Curiosity rover has observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater.

A few months ago, Perseverance also spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis. In each of these cases, the spherules were interpreted as concretions, features that formed by interaction with groundwater circulating through pore spaces in the rock.

NASA says: "Not all spherules form this way, however. They also form on Earth by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets formed in a volcanic eruption, for instance, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact."

Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team says they are working hard to determine their context and origin.

The Perseverance Science Team says the St. Pauls Bay is a "float rock," meaning it's not in its original location. The team is currently working to connect the spherule-rich texture of St. Pauls Bay to the broader stratigraphy of the area.

Initial observations suggest a possible link between the rock and one of the dark-toned layers identified from orbit. Understanding the geological context of these features is crucial for determining their origin and significance in the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and surrounding areas.