CaltechAUTHORS
Published September 16, 2017 | Version Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

In situ detection of boron by ChemCam on Mars

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • 2. ROR icon Ursinus College
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 5. ROR icon University of Leicester
  • 6. ROR icon The Open University
  • 7. ROR icon Space Science Institute
  • 8. ROR icon Astrogeology Science Center
  • 9. ROR icon University of Copenhagen

Abstract

We report the first in situ detection of boron on Mars. Boron has been detected in Gale crater at levels <0.05 wt % B by the NASA Curiosity rover ChemCam instrument in calcium-sulfate-filled fractures, which formed in a late-stage groundwater circulating mainly in phyllosilicate-rich bedrock interpreted as lacustrine in origin. We consider two main groundwater-driven hypotheses to explain the presence of boron in the veins: leaching of borates out of bedrock or the redistribution of borate by dissolution of borate-bearing evaporite deposits. Our results suggest that an evaporation mechanism is most likely, implying that Gale groundwaters were mildly alkaline. On Earth, boron may be a necessary component for the origin of life; on Mars, its presence suggests that subsurface groundwater conditions could have supported prebiotic chemical reactions if organics were also present and provides additional support for the past habitability of Gale crater.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Geophysical Union. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Received 6 JUN 2017; Accepted 9 AUG 2017; Published online 5 SEP 2017. The authors thank the NASA Mars Exploration Program and CNES for support. The team thanks JPL for developing and operating the MSL Curiosity rover mission. The authors thank the reviewer L. Hallis, the anonymous reviewer, R.B. Anderson, and S.M. McLennan for valuable manuscript comments. Frydenvang thanks the Carlsberg Foundation for support. Haldeman and Sanford thank Ursinus College for support. The authors have no real or perceived financial or other conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper. Mars and laboratory spectral data are available from the Planetary Data System (https://pds.nasa.gov/). The supporting information contain additional data.

Attached Files

Published - Gasda_et_al-2017-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl56315-sup-0001-2017GL074480-SI.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl56315-sup-0002-2017GL074480-ts01.xlsx

Files

Gasda_et_al-2017-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf

Files (1.2 MB)

Name Size
md5:5dde7b75f908c7532726a9cf4cd9afc3
585.3 kB Preview Download
md5:e919044058ecf407e51b58f0f8140fc4
648.8 kB Preview Download
md5:ca84c0123bfd36bff722c103472d7d3b
15.8 kB Download

Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
82117
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20171005-110243722

Funding

NASA
Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES)

Dates

Created
2017-10-05
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-15
Created from EPrint's last_modified field