Crystalline gray hematite was first discovered on the red planet by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, which landed at the Meridiani crater in 2004.
Typically only a few millimeters in diameter, these tiny spheres of iron oxide were found primarily across the upper surfaces of soils.
This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows this same form of hematite on the plains of Capri Chasma, part of the giant Martian system of canyons called Valles Marineris.
The red soils are colored by iron with hematite-rich particles accumulating in the upper soils, detected by the orbiter’s Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES).
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