page_title: Mudstone
section_title: Mudstone mineralogy on Mars
hierarchical_section_title: Mudstone / Mudstone mineralogy on Mars
caption_attribution_description: English: PIA21146: Mudstone Mineralogy from Curiosity's CheMin, 2013 to 2016 http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21146 This series of pie charts shows similarities and differences in the mineral compositions of mudstones at 10 sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected rock-powder samples and analyzed them with the rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. The charts are arrayed in chronological order, with an indication of relative elevation as the rover first sampled two sites on the floor of Gale Crater in 2013 and later began climbing the crater's central mound, Mount Sharp. The pie chart farthest to the right and uphill shows composition at the "Sebina" target, sampled in October 2016. Five non-mudstone rock targets that the rover drilled and analyzed within this time frame are not included. The mineralogical variations in these mudstones may be due to differences in any or all of these factors: the source materials deposited by water that entered lakes, the processes of sedimentation and rock forming, and how the rocks were later altered. One trend that stands out is that the mineral jarosite -- shown in purple -- was more prominent in the "Pahrump Hills" area of lower Mount Sharp than at sites examined either earlier or later. Jarosite is an indicator of acidic water. Mudstone layers uphill from Pahrump Hills have barely detectable amounts of jarosite, indicating a shift away from acidic conditions in these overlying -- thus younger -- layers. Clay minerals, shown as green, declined in abundance at sites midway through this series, then came back as the rover climbed higher. Each drilled-and-analyzed target is identified with a two-letter abbreviation: JK for "John Klein," CB for "Cumberland." CH for "Confidence Hills," MJ for "Mojave," TP for "Telegraph Peak," BK for "Buckskin," OD for "Oudam," MB for "Marimba," QL for "Quela," and SB for Sebina. For locations and photos of these drilling sites, see related image and/or PIA21254. Presented at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting on Dec. 13. in San Francisco, CA. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about Curiosity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
context_page_description: Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility.
  The term mudstone is also used to describe carbonate rocks that are composed predominantly of carbonate mud. However, in most contexts, the term refers to siliciclastic mudstone, composed mostly of silicate minerals.
  The NASA Curiosity rover has found deposits of mudstone on Mars that contain organic substances such as kerogen.
context_section_description: On December 13, 2016, NASA reported further evidence supporting habitability on the planet Mars as the Curiosity rover climbed higher, studying younger layers, on Mount Sharp. Also reported, the very soluble element boron was detected for the first time on Mars. In June 2018, NASA reported that Curiosity had detected kerogen and other complex organic compounds from mudstone rocks approximately 3.5 billion years old.
caption: Curiosity rover - mudstone mineralogy - 2013 to 2016 on Mars (CheMin; December 13, 2016)[9]
  NOTE: JK for "John Klein", CB for "Cumberland". CH for "Confidence Hills", MJ for "Mojave", TP for "Telegraph Peak", BK for "Buckskin", OD for "Oudam", MB for "Marimba", QL for "Quela", and SB for Sebina. (For locations/drillings, see image)
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