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New ‘Shiny’ Objects Found by Curiosity Rover Are Likely Indigenous

Friday, October 19, 2012 1:31

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(Before It's News)

A bright particle found inside a scoop hole created by the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Last weekend, the Mars Curiosity rover scooped out a few “bites” in the small, sandy dune known as Rocknest and inside the second scoop hole was a small, shiny particle, as we reported earlier. This speck – and others like it in the pit — is different than the previous object that looked like plastic and may have come from the rover itself. After some analysis, the MSL science team thinks the shiny particle is just part of the soil on Mars.

“As the science team thought about it more and more, the bright object is about the same size as the granules that it’s in and it is not uniformly bright,” said John Grotziner, MSL project scientist. “We went back and forth, and the majority of the science team thinks this is indigenous to Mars.”

And so, Grotziner said, these shiny objects likely represent a science opportunity rather than an engineering hazard.
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Read the rest of New ‘Shiny’ Objects Found by Curiosity Rover Are Likely Indigenous (545 words)

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