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While NASA imagery has shown evidence of ancient rivers and lakes on Mars that transitioned to dry dunes, uncertainty remains over the timing of the environmental changes that may have contributed to these shifts.

Now, data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover has revealed that individual crystals in the iron oxide hematite can be used as a mineralogical marker of changes to Mars’ ancient climate. Because the shape and structure of these crystallites reflect the conditions – such as temperature and water presence – under which they were formed, they can serve as an indicator of when these changes occurred.

Scientists studied 20 samples collected by Curiosity across various elevations throughout Gale Crater for a paper published Thursday in Science. Gale Crater’s walls reveal Mars’ environmental history layer by layer, with deeper elevations capturing its earliest years. The team analyzed data from the rover’s Chemistry and Minerology (CheMin) instrument and discovered that hematite showed different crystallite sizes at different elevations. They also discovered that goethite, a mineral that typically forms alongside hematite, was absent in samples from lower elevations but still present in samples from higher elevations. This suggests that warm groundwater might have remained for up to 4.7 million years in the deepest layers of Gale Crater and that during much of this time, these long-lived aquifers could have been potentially habitable.

“What we found was that warm and wet conditions were present for extended periods in buried rocks, despite Mars’ climate becoming colder,” said Tanya Peretyazhko, co-first author of the study and planetary scientist in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It means that deep in those rocks, those warmer conditions could have made for habitable conditions for much longer periods of time, provided that other essential factors were present.”

Iron oxides are considered indicators of water activity because they form in its presence. This study shows that hematite can also be a marker of climate changes based on its crystallite sizes and structures, which change under different temperatures. The scientists found that hematite crystallites from higher elevations in Gale Crater were less than 10 nanometers in size, while crystallites from lower locations were generally larger, reaching up to 65 nanometers. These findings aligned with the observations that samples from higher elevations contained both hematite and goethite, while lower elevation samples lacked goethite.

They concluded that, under warmer conditions when the pH of water is neutral or slightly alkaline, goethite can transform into hematite. These warmer conditions also favored an increase in hematite crystallite size in the deeper layers of Gale Crater through a process known as Ostwald ripening, in which smaller crystallites dissolve and contribute to the growth of larger ones.

“This can tell you that the top layers were colder and didn’t have enough water, or the water presence was relatively short-lived, so the crystallites didn’t have sufficient time and conditions to grow in size,” said Peretyazhko. “But the lower layers had longstanding warm water that allowed those crystallites to grow.”

A unique highlight of this study is that the data comes from Martian samples, rather than from theoretical modeling. Curiosity’s robotic arm delivered powdered rock to CheMin’s input funnel, where it was analyzed. “With CheMin’s X-ray diffraction patterns, we can look at the hematite crystal’s size and dimensions, information that that can’t be gathered from satellite analysis of the Martian surface.” said Tom Bristow, principal investigator of the CheMin instrument at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said CheMin is capable of making measurements with extraordinary scientific fidelity.

“It doesn’t just tell you there is hematite,” Vasavada explained. “One can use the data to extract the size and shape of the hematite crystallites and the presence of other related minerals, all of which were necessary to produce this result.”

More about Curiosity

Curiosity was built by NASA JPL, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. NASA JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. CheMin, led by NASA Ames , is one of 10 science instruments aboard Curiosity and has a cross-country team of scientists, including researchers at NASA Ames, University of Arizona, California Institute of Technology, Planetary Science Institute, Carnegie Institution for Science, Lunar and Planetary Institute, JPL, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and NASA’s Johnson. The team combines expertise in mineralogy, petrology, materials science, astrobiology and soil science, with experience studying terrestrial, lunar and Martian rocks.

For more information on NASA’s Curiosity rover, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

Victoria Segovia
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
victoria.segovia@nasa.gov

Kenny Heckle grew up in Orlando, just west of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. An 80s child, he comes from a long line of union pipefitters and fabricators.

Heckle recalls the day 42 years ago at KARS Park, which is a NASA Exchange–run recreation area for the agency’s workforce and their guests, when he attended an office party with his father. Heckle had his German Shepherd with him when a man who seemed to be enamored with the canine asked him who he was. “I’m Kenny Heckle, Wayne’s son,” he said. And the man who knew his dad well replied, “Why don’t you work for us (at NASA)?”

Two weeks later, Heckle was working at the center alongside his dad.

Heckle wasn’t a typical new employee. At 19, he already had seven years of mechanical experience, working on his father’s short-track stock cars, building and fabricating parts they needed. He later attended welding school before arriving for his first job as a contractor at NASA Kennedy’s Launch Equipment Test Facility (LETF) in 1984.

Since the 1970s, the LETF has provided NASA a place to safely assess machinery and designs to support launches through a unique set of structures, equipment, and tools to test full-scale umbilicals and release mechanisms.

Today, Heckle serves as the mechanical operations lead at NASA Kennedy’s LETF.

During the past four decades, Heckle has helped numerous NASA programs and commercial partners test their equipment ahead of launch, and in some instances, during and after liftoff. In his early years, his job was to test every umbilical on the launch pad and all the ground support equipment needed for Launch Complex 39A and B, even for Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Just two years into his career, Space Shuttle Challenger had a failure of the O-ring seals and broke apart just over a minute into its flight. Heckle remembered watching the catastrophic liftoff that morning, and hearing the broadcaster say Challenger was lost. A couple of weeks later, his team was tasked with helping to figure out what happened.

“You know, there’s always risk with spaceflight,” Heckle said. “But we got so consistent that we didn’t think something like that could happen and it hit hard. But then being able to come back and get the program going again, and being successful, that makes you proud.”

Nearly two decades later, Heckle’s team was asked to help with yet another investigation. After the Colombia accident, Heckle and his team were charged with showing how severe the damage was through their testing, and how to mitigate ice hitting a wing in the future. They spent hours shooting projectiles at thermal tiles, using ultrasonic sensors to track the data.

In recent years, Heckle has helped work on the first two Artemis missions. During the Artemis II wet dress rehearsal, there was a liquid hydrogen leak. Heckle was working long days, troubleshooting and fabricating possible solutions with Kennedy’s Prototype Lab. For Artemis I they had a similar leak, and Heckle’s team developed a process to slow fill the cryogenics and the LETF sent that information to the Artemis I launch team to implement.

During decades of problem-solving, Heckle and most of his team were contractors, having to work through the bureaucracy of working solutions across different contractors, as well as with NASA. On May 4, Heckle and 19 of his teammates applied and became NASA civil servants as part of the administrator’s workforce directive. The work done by the LETF team was deemed a critical capability to NASA’s future, and as such, the work was moved from an outside vendor to civil service, ensuring NASA is staffed and equipped to lead the most complex engineering and operational challenges directly.

The test facility ensures NASA retains the technical readiness, flexibility, and risk mitigation capabilities required for Artemis, SLS (Space Launch System), and future government and commercial missions. As the mechanical operations lead, Heckle has already noticed efficiencies with being able to get work done and securing the supplies needed now the LETF team has joined the civil servant workforce.

“If we continue to work together as a team and not have barriers, I think that will be great for the program moving forward no matter what we’re launching,” Heckle said.

May 28, 2026

After a 12-year career at NASA, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Andrew R. Morgan has retired from the agency to continue his military service. Morgan spent 272 days in space aboard the International Space Station.

NASA selected Morgan to join its 21st astronaut class in August 2013. He launched to the space station aboard a Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft on July 20, 2019, the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Morgan served as a flight engineer on International Space Station Expeditions 60, 61, and 62, contributing to hundreds of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, and space station maintenance activities. He traveled over 115 million miles (about 185 million km) while completing more than 4,300 Earth orbits over the course of his mission.

“Drew’s leadership and commitment to human spaceflight exemplify the very best of NASA,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “From his service aboard the International Space Station to his continued passion for exploration, Drew’s impact across the agency has been profound. His steadfast dedication to the agency will continue to inspire generations to come.”

During his nine months aboard the station, Morgan conducted seven spacewalks for a total of 45 hours and 48 minutes of spacewalking time, breaking the record for a single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut. Four of his spacewalks were dedicated to repairing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector designed to search for evidence of antimatter and dark matter.

“Drew approached every challenge with quiet confidence, sharp judgment, and an unwavering commitment to his team,” said Scott Tingle, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA Johnson. “Whether serving in orbit or strengthening crew readiness here on the ground, he consistently elevated the people and missions around him. His leadership and example will continue to resonate across the astronaut corps for years to come.”

Morgan’s career at NASA also included serving as the Astronaut Office’s mission support branch chief, crew operations officer, astronaut mission control team liaison for Expeditions 67 and 68, and Army detachment commander. In his final two years at NASA, Morgan served a rotational assignment back to the U.S. Army as commander of U.S. Army Garrison Kwajalein Atoll, and senior military advisor for the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Morgan was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, but considers New Castle, Pennsylvania, his hometown. At the time of his NASA astronaut selection, he was a board-certified emergency physician and had served in elite special forces units around the globe. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the U.S. Army War College. He is currently serving as the commanding general of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

“It has been an honor to serve in the nation’s space program,” Morgan said. “I am proud to have represented my country on an international mission that brings the best of humanity together for a shared purpose. I will miss the camaraderie of my incredible NASA teammates and their unparalleled expertise. While leaving the astronaut corps is bittersweet, I’m excited to continue serving our country as a leader in the U.S. Army.”

To learn more about how NASA explores the unknown and innovates for the benefit of humanity, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts

-end-

Anna Schneider

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-483-5111

anna.c.schneider@nasa.gov

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft flies above NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on April 28, 2026, during testing focused on lower-speed and altitude flight conditions in support of NASA’s Quesst mission.

The X-59 has completed initial test flights at high altitudes and near-supersonic speeds, opening the door for additional flights focused on its full operating range. These more recent, lower-altitude flights at lesser speeds are helping to confirm the X-plane’s performance across a wide range of conditions, including flying with the landing gear both retracted and extended.

Read more about this series of test flights.

Image credit: NASA/Jim Ross

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