Photos: NASA's Opportunity rover finds 'newberries' on Mars, may contain clay

NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity’s Investigations at Endeavour Crater. Image shown during news conference by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Steve Squyres of Cornell University at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2012.

NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity’s Investigations at Endeavour Crater. Image shown during news conference by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Steve Squyres of Cornell University at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2012.

NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity’s Investigations at Endeavour Crater. Image shown during news conference by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Steve Squyres of Cornell University at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2012.

NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity’s Investigations at Endeavour Crater. Image shown during news conference by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Steve Squyres of Cornell University at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 4, 2012.

Knock knock — NASA's Opportunity rover has some Martian clay news for you.

Scientists said Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco that Opportunity — the solar-powered six-wheeler that landed on Mars in 2004 (and has far outlasted its original, three-month mission) — uncovered hints of clay minerals along the western rim of the Endeavour crater.

Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator at Cornell University said, "If you are a geologist studying a site like this, one of the first things you do is walk the outcrop, and that's what we've done with Opportunity," reports NASA.

Two outcrops of high interest on Matijevic Hill are "Whitewater Lake" and "Kirkwood." Whitewater Lake is light-toned material that science team members believe may contain clay.Kirkwood contains small spheres with composition, structure and distribution that differ from other iron-rich spherules, nicknamed blueberries, that Opportunity found at its landing site and throughout the Meridiani Planum area it has explored. Squyres calls the Kirkwood spheres "newberries." 

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