NASA found the slab that could possibly contain life on Mars

NASA's Curiosity self-propelled robot has left the route to explore the surface of Mars to study a strange stone capable of containing life in the past.

Discovered a slab of stone that could possibly contain life on Mars

According to Discovery Channel, NASA said, thanks to the ChemCam laser scanner and some other devices of the Mars Curiosity self-propelled robot , the scientists could tell that the Elk slab contained lots of silica and hydrogen.

Silica - oxygen slicon compound - is often found in quartz on Earth, which suggests that the Elk slab is likely to be eligible to preserve carbon-containing organic molecules from pre- Martian times, if Those molecules used to exist here. For this reason, the control team sent Curiosity back about 46m to study the Elk slab.

" No one can predict what will happen on Mars, however, the Elk slab is ," said Detective Roger Wiens of ChemCam, a US-based Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. an extremely interesting object and should come back to study it. '

Image of Lamoose stone slab on the surface of Mars recorded by Curiosity, published on July 23 (NASA photo)

Elk stones are found in the low area of ​​the Marias Pass , 5.5 km high where Curiosity autonomous robots are studying rock patterns. Marias Pass is considered to be a ' geographic contact zone ', where black sand rocks are followed by light mudstone.

Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Curiosity project, said, 'We found a rising layer of soil called Missoula where the two rocks interacted, but the terrain This is quite small and close to the ground '. 'We used the robot's arm to record the image with the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera to study this area better, ' he explained.

After examining the Missoula soil , the Curiosity robot continued its journey, but a ChemCam data analyst convinced the research team to come back to learn more about the Elk slab.

Curiosity began its journey of exploring the Gale Cater crater 154 km wide on the surface of Mars over the past 3 years, after landing on August 5, 2012. The main task of this 6-wheel robot is to search for potential. the existence of life in this area.