NASA's Curiosity rover spots another bizarre-shaped delicate rock on Mars

NASA's decade-old Curiosity rover has spotted ar bizarre feature while exploring Mars. During its recent observation, rover has imd what looks like a dust-coloured plant stemming out of a rock on red planet. According to  SETI Institute's Twitter post, strange-looking feature is "most likely cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock." This finding is significant as sedimentary rocks are formed from pre-existing rocks or pieces of once-living organisms. SETI institute furr explained that rest of rock where small pillars are "was made of softer material and was eroded away."

tably, this is t first time Curiosity rover has come across a surprising discovery of mineral rocks in Gale crater, its exploration site. Earlier in February this year, Curiosity's project scientist Abigail Fraeman shared an exciting picture featuring a flower-shaped rock. 

Curiosity spots flower-shaped rock on Mars

Taking to Twitter, Fraeman explained how flower-shaped structure came to be. She said that microscopic im features a delicate structure which was formed by minerals precipitating from water. In a second tweet, scientist said that mission team has found such structures in past too. se structures are most prominent in Pahrump Hills region on Mars and, according to Fraeman, se features were made of salts called sulfates. 

Currently, rover is exploring red planet at 'Mirador Butte', a location on Mount Sharp, also called Aeolis Mons within Gale crater. In a recent mission update, Curiosity team revealed that climbing terrain of Mount Sharp is extremely difficult and that rover's Mast Camera or MastCam "is very busy" in this landscape. mission team revealed that it is getting a bit dusty at Gale crater but Curiosity is headed uphill for furr investigations. "Our environment and atmosphere group keeps monitoring atmosphere with observations of atmosphere opacity each sol (Martian day) of plan,"  mission team said in a blog.

Im: Twitter/@SETIInstitute