Curiosity rover finds large carbon deposits on Mars

Lead author Dr. Ben Tutolo, PhD, an associate professor with the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary, is a participating scientist on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover team. The team is working to understand climate transitions and habitability on ancient Mars as Curiosity explores Gale Crater.

The paper, published this week in the journal Science, reveals that data from three of Curiosity's drill sites had siderite, an iron carbonate material, within sulfate-rich layers of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

"The discovery of large carbon deposits in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars," says Tutolo.

Reaching the strata, he says, was a long-term goal of the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

"The abundance of highly soluble salts in these rocks and similar deposits mapped over much of Mars has been used as evidence of the 'great drying" of Mars during its dramatic shift from a warm and wet early Mars to its current, cold and dry state," says Tutolo. Sedimentary carbonate has long been predicted to have formed under the CO₂-rich ancient Martian atmosphere, but Tutolo says identifications had previously been sparse.

NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012, and has travelled more than 34 kilometres on the Martian surface. The discovery of carbonate suggests that the atmosphere contained enough carbon dioxide to support liquid water existing on the planet's surface. As the atmosphere thinned, the carbon dioxide transformed into rock form.

NASA says future missions and analysis of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm the findings and help to better understand the planet's early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost.

Tutolo says scientists are ultimately trying to determine whether Mars was ever capable of supporting life -- and the latest paper brings them closer to an answer. "It tells us that the planet was habitable and that the models for habitability are correct," he says.

"The broader implications are the planet was habitable up until this time, but then, as the CO₂ that had been warming the planet started to precipitate as siderite, it likely impacted Mars' ability to stay warm.

"The question looking forward is how much of this CO₂ from the atmosphere was actually sequestered? Was that potentially a reason we began to lose habitability?"

The latest research, he says, fits with his ongoing work on Earth -- trying to turn anthropogenic CO₂ into carbonates as a climate change solution.

"Learning about the mechanisms of making these minerals on Mars helps us to better understand how we can do it here," he says. "Studying the collapse of Mars' warm and wet early days also tells us that habitability is a very fragile thing."

Tutolo says it's clear that small changes in atmospheric CO₂ can lead to huge changes in the ability of the planet to harbour life.

"The most remarkable thing about Earth is that it's habitable and it has been for at least four billion years," he adds. "Something happened to Mars that didn't happen to Earth."