clay mineral

In one, the craft could take samples of clay minerals at a site like Mawrth Vallis, a channel thought to be carved by a long-ago flood.

Liquid water has a fairly distinctive radar signature, but examining the electrical properties of both clay minerals and frozen brine revealed those materials could mimic this signal.

In a river bed, “there are a lot of clay minerals, and as they settle, they can really just kind of smother anything organic, or they can even absorb organic molecules,” she says.

Another Science study used infrared spectroscopy to demonstrate how widespread carbon-bearing minerals and hydrated clay minerals were across Bennu’s surface.

It is generally imbedded in lumps in the red clay mineral soil.