Space & Astronomy

Mystery spheres photographed on Mars

By T.K. Randall
September 16, 2012 ·  18 comments

Image Credit: NASA Curiosity might have been hitting the headlines lately but on a different part of the Red Planet its fellow rover Opportunity is still going strong. The latest images returned show a dense concentration of strange spherical shapes on the Martian surface. The spheres are similar to those found by Opportunity in 2004 ( nicknamed 'blueberries' ) but there are stark differences.

"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said principal investigator Steve Squyres. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."[!gad]Curiosity might have been hitting the headlines lately but on a different part of the Red Planet its fellow rover Opportunity is still going strong. The latest images returned show a dense concentration of strange spherical shapes on the Martian surface. The spheres are similar to those found by Opportunity in 2004 ( nicknamed 'blueberries' ) but there are stark differences.

"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said principal investigator Steve Squyres. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."

Source: NASA | Comments (18)

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