The research team looked at what oxidant could be responsible for the precipitation of manganese in the rocks on Mars.
The ChemCam instrument onboard Curiosity rover detected the deposits, which indicate that the sediments had formed in a river, delta, or near the shoreline of an ancient lake.Manganese has been observed on Mars by the NASA Curiosity rover in multiple places, but a higher-than-usual amount has been detected in the Gale crater.
On Earth, manganese becomes enriched because of oxygen in the atmosphere, and this process is often sped up by the presence of microbes, as per the paper. This work has important implications for the habitability of Mars to microbes that could have used Manganese redox reactions, owing to its multiple redox states, as an energy source for metabolism.The sedimentary rocks explored by the rover are a mix of sands, silts, and muds. The sandy rocks are more porous, and groundwater can more easily pass through sands than the muds that make up most of the lakebed rocks in the Gale Crater.
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