Curiosity Rover has discovered strange , multi-coloured veins on Mars that could give astronomers new insights into the red planet 's watery past . The mineral veins were found at a site called 'Garden City ' on the slopes of Mount Sharp and stick up from the rock by up to 6cm ( 2.5 inches ) . Scientists believe the bizarre network of ridges formed in Mars ' wet past billions of years ago above the now eroded , much softer bedrock . This March 18 , view from the Mast Camera on the Curiosity rover shows a network of two-tone mineral veins . Scientists believe the bizarre formed in Mars ' wet past billions of years ago above the now eroded bedrock . The ridges contain both bright and dark material . While Curiosity has found brightly coloured veins before , the darker ones remain have stumped scientists . 'Some of them look like ice-cream sandwiches : dark on both edges and white in the middle , ' said Linda Kah , a Curiosity science-team member at the University of Tennessee , Knoxville . 'These materials tell us about secondary fluids that were transported through the region after the host rock formed . ' Veins such as these form where fluids move through cracked rock and leave minerals in the fractures , often affecting the chemistry of the rock surrounding the fractures . This view from the Mars Hand Lens Imager on the arm of Curiosity rover is a close-up of a two-tone mineral vein at a site called 'Garden City ' on lower Mount Sharp . It was taken during night , illuminated by LEDs . Kah said , 'At least two secondary fluids have left evidence here . 'We want to understand the chemistry of the different fluids that were here and the sequence of events . How have later fluids affected the host rock ? ' Some of the sequence is known : Mud that formed lake-bed mudstones 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-sulphate-rich veins do - although both flows occurred after the cracks formed . In total , what is now the planet 's arid northern plains would have contained at least 12.4 million cubic miles ( 20 million cubic km ) of water . Thanks to missions like Nasa 's Curiosity rover , we know Mars once had water - but until now we did n't know how much . Scientists have provided the best estimates yet , claiming it once had more water than the Arctic Ocean - and the planet kept these oceans for more than 1.5 billion years . The findings suggest there was ample time and water for life on Mars to thrive , but over the last 3.7 billion years the red planet has lost 87 per cent of its water - leaving it barren and dry . The study by scientists at Nasa 's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt , Maryland , is the first to determine just how much water Mars had in its past . During its wet Noachian period - 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago - it is estimated that it had enough water to cover the entire surface in a liquid layer 450 feet ( 137 metres ) deep . However , it 's likely that most of the water formed an ocean that occupied the northern hemisphere of Mars , which would have been as deep as one mile ( 1.6km ) in places - comparable to the Mediterranean Sea on Earth . The research estimates that , in total , what is now the planet 's arid northern plains would have contained at least 12.4 million cubic miles ( 20 million cubic kilometres ) of water . Curiosity has been studying rocky areas since landing on the Martian surface in 2012 . Garden City is about 39 feet ( 12 meters ) higher than the bottom edge of the 'Pahrump Hills ' outcrop of the bedrock forming the basal layer of Mount Sharp , at the center of Mars ' Gale Crater . 'We investigated Pahrump Hills the way a field geologist would , looking over the whole outcrop first to choose the best samples to collect , and it paid off , ' said David Blake of Nasa 's Ames Research Center . Analysis is still in its early stages , but the three drilled samples from Pahrump Hills have clear differences in mineral ingredients . It seems that the two-toned minerals were created from two distinctive wet periods on the planet . Curiosity is now exploring different layers of Mount Sharp in the hope of finding more clues to the red planet 's history .
Mineral ##ites were discovered at a site called ' Garden City ' on planet Sharp . They lay in a ' watery past above the now eroded , softer bedrock . copper - toned rocks were created from two wet periods on the same planet .