Did They Find Water on Mars? Opal Discovery Suggests Watery Past

In October 2021, NASA's Mars Rover, Perseverance, made a groundbreaking discovery: a wee, shiny rock that turned out to be opal.

Ingenuity & Curiousity

This was the first-ever discovery of such a gemstone on Mars, and it has sparked a lot of interest among scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

Iridescent opals are highly prized for their iridescent hues, and they are usually formed when silica-rich rocks are hydrated. Similar to opals on Earth, opals on Mars formed when volcanic rock and water interacted.

As well as the volcanoes and deep canyons, Mars has vast plains of hardened lava, mountains, and valleys carved by ancient rivers and lakes.

These light-coloured rocks encircling fracture "halos" on Mars, shown by dotted lines, have been identified as opal through recent analyses of data from the Curiosity rover.

So, did they find water on Mars? Well, opals are usually formed by interacting with silica-rich rocks, which are fromed when interacting with water. As a result, Mars may have had liquid water and possibly even life in the past.

Hence this discovery further reinforces the idea that Mars may have been habitable in the past.

It is also possible that this opal could be a useful source of water for future humans since it does not contain a tightly bound crystal structure, so when heated and ground down, the water can be released.