Curiosity's ChemCam Views a Rock Shaped Like Coral
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used the Remote Micro Imager, part of its ChemCam instrument, to view this wind-eroded rock shaped like a piece of coral on July 24, 2025, the 4,609th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Curiosity has found many rocks like this one, which were formed by ancient water combined with billions of years of sandblasting by the wind.
This particular rock is similar to one seen by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager around the same time.
Curiosity has found many small features like this one, which formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing the unique shapes seen today.
This common process, seen extensively on Earth, has produced fantastic shapes on Mars, including a flower-shaped rock.
Curiosity was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES), the University of Toulouse, and the French national research agency (CNRS).
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