BRAND-NEW
NASA’s Perseverance Spotted a Purple Coating on Mars NASA’s Perseverance rover has spotted a thin, smooth, purple coating on some stones on Mars, which could hold clues to the planet’s potential for ancient life.
R
ed dust paints Mars in ruddy hues, from the surface to the
conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
skies. But NASA’s Perseverance rover has spotted swaths of
The colour touches rocks of all different shapes and sizes—even tiny
another colour among the rusty shades. At nearly every site the
pebbles haven’t escaped the pops of purple. But how, exactly, did
robotic geologist visits, the Martian palette includes purple.
these coatings form? “I don’t really have a good answer for you,” Ollila
The colour forms a thin, smooth coating on some stones, and it leaves
says.
paint-like blobs on others.
Scientists are eager to know more. “There’s a lot to look forward to as
Still other rocks look as if they’ve been partially frosted in magenta
we continue to do analyses,” says Nina Lanza3, the team lead for Space
icing, says Ann Ollila1, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory
and Planetary Exploration at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has
who presented an early analysis of the coatings2 at a recent
been studying the coatings alongside Ollila.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=2b-ZCF8AAAAJ&view_op=list_ works&sortby=pubdate 2 https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/989148
3
1
https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/national-security-science/2021-spring/mars.php
© JPL-CALTECH
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured this image of the rock Nataani in May 2021, which includes a purple smear near the right edge of the frame. Five tiny holes punch through the coating where a series of laser shots were used to study the rock’s composition.
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N. 73 - JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 - international PAINT&COATING magazine
