Rover finds man-made object in Martian dirt

NASA's Mars rover has swallowed its first scoopful of dirt from the Red Planet's surface — and found some bright-coloured objects that experts briefly thought might be man-made, Sm.com.au reports, citing the US space agency.

In an update on Curiosity's two-and-a-half month old mission, NASA said its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument, deep in the car-sized rover's belly, will analyse the soil to learn more about its make-up.

Some experts wondered if one of the bright-coloured objects — seen on a photo of a scoop hole in the Martian soil — could be man-made, like an object seen earlier this monththought to be plastic from the rover itself.

"We began to see some bright flecks in the scoop areas," Curiosity's project scientist told reporters in Pasadena, California, adding: "The science team started calling them schmutz."


Some suggested they could be man-made, but following discussions between scientists and engineers, there was a "strong consensus" that they were indigenous to Mars.

This conclusion was backed by the fact that the objects were left visible at the bottom of holes left by the rover's scoop, meaning they were normally underneath the planet's surface.

"We can't rule out that they're something man-made but we don't think that they are," he said.


Last week, NASA determined that a bright object observed on the ground near the robot several days previously was a bit of plastic that may have dropped from the rover itself, and did not jeopardise the rover's operations.

"The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material," the mission said at the time. "It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign."