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$This false-color image demonstrates how use of special filters available on Curiosity’s Mastcam camera can reveal the presence of certain minerals in target rocks. It is a composite of images taken through three ‘science’ filters chosen for making hematite stand out as exaggerated purple. Mastcam’s narrow-band filters used for this view help to increase spectral contrast, making blues bluer and reds redder, particularly with the processing used to boost contrast in each of the component images of this composite. Fine-grained hematite preferentially absorbs sunlight around in the green portion of the spectrum around 527 nm. That gives it the purple look from a combination of red and blue light reflected by the hematite and reaching the camera through the other two filters. Bright lines within the rocks are fractures filled with calcium sulfate minerals. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.$

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Mineral Hematite on Mars

Nov 12, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found spectral evidence of an iron-oxide mineral called hematite (Fe2O3) on a rock near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, Mars. This...