NASA’s curiosity rover is exploring the Gale Crater on Mars. Some of the objectives of the rover are to investigate the geology and climate of mars, and to find out whether there was environmental condition that favored microbial life and to investigate the evidence of water.

The two tone mineral veins discovered at the Pahrump foothills at the base of the mount Sharp which falls in the center of gale crater and the scientists call it as Garden city site. This indicates that once there was flow of fluids in the regions which has caused the veins. They are found in the ridges where the bedrock eroded making the veins visible. Some veins reveal mountain layers indicating the different stages of weathering.

The fluids once flowing through the rocks were seeped by the cracks thus depositing minerals in the cracks and changing the chemical composition of the rock inside the cracks.

“Some of (the mineral veins) look like ice-cream sandwiches: dark on both edges and white in the middle,” said Linda Kah, Curiosity science-team member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,

She said, after the rock was formed the secondary fluids flowed through the region.

“Mud that formed lake-bed mudstones Curiosity examined near its 2012 landing site and after reaching Mount Sharp must have dried and hardened before the fractures formed, the dark material that lines the fracture walls reflects an earlier episode of fluid flow than the white, calcium-sulfate-rich veins do, although both flows occurred after the cracks formed.” NASA wrote in an official statement.

The white deposits are of gypsum and the dark mineral at present is unknown.

The existence of some fluids on Mars does not mean life existed but it points to the fact that there were right conditions at some point of time.