Curiosity has discovered a coral-like mineral formation on Mars

According to the British newspaper, the Daily Mail, the spacecraft’s team confirmed that it was an “advanced crystal mass”, which NASA JPL’s experts say may have been formed from water – stained minerals.

And although it looks great in pictures, it is actually smaller than a penny and contains 3D crystal clusters made of a mixture of minerals.

NASA scientists say the creation could tell them about the soil structure of Mars, including the flow of ancient water, and what the planet once looked like.

Curiosity Studies Gale Greater, a 96-mile-diameter dry lake bed that includes the Aeolis Mons, is 18,000 feet above the crater floor.

NASA first selected the abyss as the base for its rover, which landed on Mars in November 2011, due to evidence of water in the distant past.

Curiosity project scientist Abigail Freeman took to Twitter to describe the extraordinary creation, describing it as “tiny little structures created by the absorption of minerals from water”.

This is not the first time the rover has seen these systems, which are made of salts known as sulphates, if they are the same versions previously discovered.

This is known as a starch crystalline mass, where the term diagenetic refers to the remodeling of minerals, in this case mostly from the flow of water.