FIRST ROCK DATING EXPERIMENT PERFORMED ON MARS

The work, led by geochemist Ken Farley of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) could provide not only valuable information about the Martian geology, but give aid in the search for life on Mars.

With the huge importance of the Curiosity mission, every detail was planned in detail months before the shuttle was launched, but shortly before the rover left Earth in 2011, NASA’s participating scientist program asked researchers from all over the world to submit new ideas for experiments that could be performed with the already installed instruments. Farley was one of the 29 selected participants and he submitted a proposal to conduct a series of techniques fairly similar to those used on Earth do date rocks. His proposal was accepted, and in a paper published this week in the journal Science Express he and his colleagues conducted the first age determinations performed on another planet.

Before this geochronology experiment took place, scientists were using the so-called “crater counting” method, which had estimated the age of Gale Crater and its surroundings to be between 3.6 and 4.1 billion years old. Crater counting relies on a surprisingly simple fact: since Mars is constantly bombarded by meteorites, an area with more craters is going to be older; researchers have developed a way to transpose the number of craters into an estimated age.

With Farley’s method, the Curiosity rover calculated the age of the mudstone at Gale Crater to be about 3.86 to 4.56 billion years old – incredibly close to initial estimates!

Read more at http://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/dating-rocks-mars-12122013/#oOpHqcBEkxGgxOWq.99