What Scientists Just Found Buried in Martian Rocks

Mars has long been associated with rust-colored dust and barren rock. A new finding from NASA’s Perseverance rover is adding something unexpected to that picture: tiny crystals that match the chemical description of rubies, and possibly sapphires, embedded in Martian pebbles. The discovery was presented by researcher Ann Ollila of Los Alamos National Laboratory at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas in March 2026, and it caught even veteran planetary scientists off guard.

“I was very surprised,” Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute told the conference session. Treiman was not part of the research team. On Earth, the mineral that produces rubies and sapphires — corundum — forms through intense heat and pressure driven by tectonic activity. Mars has no plate tectonics. The presence of corundum there requires a different explanation entirely.

How the Rover Found Them

Perseverance carries an instrument called SuperCam, which uses lasers to analyze the composition of rocks and surface materials. SuperCam can either burn off the surface layer of a rock or excite the material to produce luminescence, then uses cameras to analyze the resulting light. When the rover directed its laser at a rock designated Hampden River in Jezero Crater, the material lit up almost identically to ruby specimens tested in a laboratory setting on Earth.

Two additional rocks — Coffee Cove and Smiths Harbour — produced similar results. Across all three, the spectroscopic readings showed the clear chemical signature of corundum with chromium inclusions, the combination that produces rubies. Whether the crystals are technically rubies or another form of corundum depends on the precise trace element composition, which remains uncertain given how small the crystals are. Each one measures less than 0.2 millimeters in diameter — far too small to see with the rover’s cameras, let alone pick up and examine.

Why Mars Has Them at All

The leading explanation, according to Live Science’s reporting on the findings, is meteorite impacts. Over billions of years, Mars has been struck repeatedly by space rocks traveling at enormous velocities. Those collisions generate the kind of extreme heat and pressure that — on Earth — would require tectonic activity to produce. The impacts compress and superheat the surrounding dust and rock, potentially creating the conditions for corundum to form.

Researcher Valerie Payre, a planetary geologist at the University of Iowa and a co-author on the study, noted that the chemistry of corundum varies depending on trace elements present. Chromium produces rubies; titanium and iron shift the color toward sapphire. The crystals found by Perseverance may contain a mix of both, depending on the local mineralogy at each impact site.

What This Means for Mars Science

The finding adds a new dimension to the geological portrait of Mars — a world whose violent impact history may have produced mineralization that scientists had not previously considered looking for. Olivier Beyssac, a senior scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and another co-author, told Live Science that slightly larger corundum crystals could theoretically exist on the surface. “Yes, possibly,” he said, though he noted that corundum is rare even on Earth and rarely forms in large crystals.

For anyone imagining a future where Martian gemstones become a commodity, the reality check is significant. The crystals are microscopic, formed under conditions that do not lend themselves to the kind of gem-quality growth that makes rubies valuable on Earth. Still, their presence tells researchers something meaningful about how impact events shaped the planet’s mineralogy over geological time.

A Window Into Planetary History

Planetary scientists have long used mineral signatures to reconstruct the history of a world — what temperatures it reached, what forces shaped its surface, and what kind of chemistry was possible there. Corundum on Mars is a new data point in that reconstruction. Its presence in float rocks on the floor of Jezero Crater suggests that the crater’s violent formation history left mineralogical traces that are still readable billions of years later.

Perseverance continues its traverse of Jezero, and researchers are now watching for additional corundum signatures in rocks ahead. The rover cannot collect these particular crystals for return to Earth, but the spectroscopic data it has gathered gives scientists enough to work with — at least for now.

References: Mars Is Hiding a Secret Clutch of Gemstone-Like Crystals, Including Rubies and Possibly Sapphires | NASA’s Perseverance Rover Has Found Rubies and Sapphires on Mars