New Research Makes Strongest Case Yet For Why Mars Is Red

Reference: See here

Headlines:

If you know one thing about Mars it⁘s probably this: it⁘s red. The distant planet⁘s inaccessibility has long made the reason for its hue a matter of conjecture. The prevailing theory has been that hematite, an iron-oxide mineral, is the most likely contributor to Mars⁘ terrestrial color.

New research by an international team of researchers, including Vincent Chevrier, an associate research professor at the University of Arkansas⁘ Center for Space and Planetary Science, now argues that a different iron oxide mineral is in fact responsible for the Mars⁘ color: ferrihydrite.

The team⁘s research was published in Nature Communications . The researchers combined observational data from a range of orbital and ground-level measurements by rovers with novel laboratory experiments that synthesized Martian dust. In so doing, they were able to reverse engineer Martian dust that conformed to known spectral data.

Does it matter which kind of iron oxide is coating Mars? It does if you want to gain insight into what the conditions on Mars were in the distant past.

Chevrier⁘s biggest contribution to the study was a collection of natural and synthetic Martian soils he created and assembled for spectroscopic analysis. He actually developed these iron oxide-based soils more than two decades ago as part of his Ph.D. work on a thesis subtitled⁘ ⁘Why is Mars Red?⁘

Chevrier sent the samples to his colleagues at Brown so they could measure their spectra and compare them to data that had already been returned from Mars, including data collected by the Curiosity, Pathfinder and Opportunity rovers. Ultimately, laboratory experimenters determined that a mixture of submicron-sized ferrihydrite and basalt dust best matched the observational data.

#news