Ben Tutolo's Research Unlocks Mars’ Past

Associate professor Ben Tutolo has, in some ways, been to Mars and back this year.

His work with NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover team led to evidence of a carbon cycle on ancient Mars. It has brought scientists closer to an answer on whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting life.

Ben’s paper, published earlier this year in the journal Science, reveals that data from three of Curiosity’s drill sites had siderite, an iron carbonate material, within sulfate-rich layers of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

Sedimentary carbonate has long been predicted to have formed under the CO2-rich ancient Martian atmosphere, but Tutolo says identifications had previously been sparse. 

The discovery of carbonate suggests that the atmosphere contained enough carbon dioxide to support liquid water existing on the planet’s surface. As the atmosphere thinned, the carbon dioxide transformed into rock form. 

NASA says future missions and analysis of other sulfate-rich areas on Mars could confirm the findings and help to better understand the planet’s early history and how it transformed as its atmosphere was lost. 

The latest research, he says, fits with his ongoing work on Earth – trying to turn anthropogenic CO2 into carbonates as a climate change solution.