research reveals Mars has far less minerals than Earth

Almost 6,000 unique minerals are known to exist on The planet, however after over 50 years of examinations, just 161 minerals have been recorded on Mars — an emphatically lower number for a planet that imparts a lot of in like manner to our own.

The distinction, as per another review, has emerged on the grounds that minerals on Mars have had less pathways to frame contrasted and those on The planet, despite the fact that the two planets started on fundamentally the same directions for mineral advancement.

Following exploration to list mineral development and advancement on The planet, Hazen et al directed a methodical investigation of every one of the 161 Martian minerals uncovered through the past 50 years of Mars missions and examinations of Martian shooting stars.

Though prior work recognized 57 essential and optional mineral-shaping instruments on The planet, the new review distinguished only 20 methods of mineral arrangement on Mars.

Right off the bat, in the planets' accounts, minerals on Earth and Mars are shaped in comparative ways. For example, the primary minerals on the two planets probably solidified straightforwardly from cooling magma.

Aqueous action probably additionally prompted numerous new minerals on every planet. Nonetheless, Earth's variety of minerals went through broad phases of expansion billions of years prior to the beginning of plate tectonics and the multiplication of life—processes not known to have happened on Mars.

The Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin for short, determines the abundances of various minerals on Mars and measures them. Phyllosilicates, olivine, pyroxenes, hematite, magnetite, gypsum, and other minerals have all been discovered on Mars thus far.

Minerals are a sign of the environment at the time of their formation. When lava solidifies, for instance, the two primary minerals in basalt, olivine and pyroxene, form. Both the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers on Mars discovered jarosite, which precipitates from water and is found in sedimentary rocks.

With the help of CheMin, researchers can learn more about how minerals on Mars were formed by water—an essential component of life as we know it. For instance, gypsum is a mineral that contains calcium, sulfur, and water. The crystal structure of anhydrite, a calcium and sulfur mineral, does not contain any water. CheMin can recognize the two. Various minerals are connected to specific sorts of conditions. CheMin is a tool used by scientists to look for mineral clues that point to an environment on Mars that might have supported life in the past.

The rover drills into rocks, collects the fine powder that results, and delivers it to a sample holder to prepare rock samples for analysis. The scoop is used to collect the soil.

CheMin then, at that point, coordinates a light emission beam as fine as a human hair through the powdered material. Like visible light, X-rays are electromagnetic waves. They are invisible to the naked eye due to their much shorter wavelength. Some of the X-rays that hit the rock or soil sample are absorbed by the sample's atoms and re-emitted or fluoresced at energies that are specific to the atoms in the sample.

In conclusion in spite of the fact that there are without a doubt numerous mineral stages on and underneath Mars' surface that presently can't seem to be noticed, the specialists note that the complete count of Martian minerals is still probable to be a significant degree more modest than Earth's.

Their research is distributed in the Diary of Geophysical Exploration: Planets