NASA is stunned by the white stone on the red planet

The presence of a white stone on Mars made the scientists of the US Space Agency (NASA) stunned.

The white stone is called Tintina in the Gale hole on Mars. (Photo: NASA)

The cake of Curiosity self-propelled probes rolls through a stone on the surface of the Gale hole and erodes its outer layer. When the image of the stone was sent to earth, NASA scientists were stunned to see it as a white stone. They called it "Tintina," the BBC reported.

"This is the brightest and whiteest object we've ever seen at the Gale hole , " said Melissa Rice, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology in the US. Rice is one of the experts in Curiosity program.

White stone is an unusual object on Mars, which is often called "red planet". White is a sign that minerals containing water exist in rocks. It is possible that these minerals form when water flows on the surface of the Gale hole several billion years ago.

Last week NASA announced that Curiosity found clay minerals in the rock it drilled. The existence of clay shows that water once existed on the red planet. Now, finding white stone reinforces the hypothesis of the existence of water on Mars in the past.

Water is essential for life. So it is very likely that bacteria once existed on Mars more than three billion years ago.