After 12 Years, Mars Rover Curiosity Makes 'Most Unusual Find to Date'

12 years on Mars - and NASA's Curiosity rover "has made its most unusual find to date," reports CNN - rocks made of pure sulfur. "And it all began when the 1-ton rover happened to drive over a rock and crack it open, revealing yellowish-green crystals never spotted before on the red planet.""I think it's the strangest find of the whole mission and the most unexpected," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "I have to say, there's a lot of luck involved here. Not every rock has something interesting inside...." White stones had been visible in the distance, and the mission scientists wanted a closer look. The rover drivers at JPL, who send instructions to Curiosity, did a 90-degree turn to put the robotic explorer in the right position for its cameras to capture a mosaic of the surrounding landscape. On the morning of May 30, Vasavada and his team looked at Curiosity's mosaic and saw a crushed rock lying amid the rover's wheel tracks. A closer picture of the rock made clear the "mind-blowing" find, he said... "No one had pure sulfur on their bingo card," Vasavada said... Members of the team were stunned twice - once when they saw the "gorgeous texture and color inside" the rock and then when they used Curiosity's instruments to analyze the rock and received data indicating it was pure sulfur, Vasavada said. Vasavada also was grateful for the original landing site where Curiosity began methodically exploring back in 2012. "I'm glad we chose something that was 12 years' worth of science."

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