As well as using the rover's X-ray spectrometer on Whitewater Lake and Kirkwood to determine the chemical elements present, and thus get a better idea of their mineralogical composition, the team needs to work out the order and position of the rock layers to tell them something of their relative ages.
"The work done by the MIT team paves the way to find new containment strategies" because it allows a better understanding of the patterns characterizing the initial stages of a disease outbreak, he said in a comment on the research.