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NASA: Rover Confirms Martian Life Could Have Existed

Mar. 12, 2013 9:00pm Liz Klimas

NASA Curiosity Rover Confirms Habitable Environment for Life on Mars

This set of images compares rocks seen by NASA’s Opportunity rover and Curiosity rover at two different parts of Mars. On the left is ” Wopmay” rock, in Endurance Crater, Meridiani Planum, as studied by the Opportunity rover. On the right are the rocks of the “Sheepbed” unit in Yellowknife Bay, in Gale Crater, as seen by Curiosity. (Image and Caption: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/MSSS)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Curiosity rover has answered a key question about Mars: The red planet in the past had some of the right ingredients needed to support primitive life.

The evidence comes from a chemical analysis by Curiosity, which last month flexed its robotic arm to drill into a fine-grained, veiny rock and then test the powder.

This side-by-side comparison shows the X-ray diffraction patterns of two different samples collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Curiosity rover. (Image and caption: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames)

Curiosity is the first spacecraft sent to Mars that could collect a sample from deep inside a rock, and scientist said Tuesday that they hit pay dirt with that first rock.

“We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” said chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

Watch the announcement:

The rover made a dramatic “seven-minutes-of-terror” landing last August near the planet’s equator. A key task: Find out if ancient Mars ever had conditions favorable for microscopic organisms.

The car-size rover is not equipped to detect microbes, living or extinct. It can only use its onboard laboratories to examine Martian rocks to determine the kind of environment they might have lived in.

The analysis showed the rock contained clay minerals that formed in a watery environment. It also had traces of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and simple carbon – essential chemical ingredients for life.

Unlike some places on Mars, scientists said the ancient water at the site appeared to be neutral and not too salty. Curiosity previously found a hint of the site’s watery past – an old streambed that the six-wheel rover crossed to get to the flat bedrock.

Curiosity has yet to turn up evidence of complex carbon compounds, considered life’s chemical building blocks. Scientists said a priority is to search for a place where organics might be preserved.

The drilled rock isn’t far from Curiosity’s landing spot in Gale Crater; the rover is ultimately headed to a mountain in the crater’s middle. Images from space spied signs of clay layers at the base of the mountain.

This false-color map shows the area within Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT) and the location where Curiosity collected its first drilled sample at the “John Klein” rock. (Image and caption: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet.

Over the years, Mars spacecraft in orbit and on the surface have beamed back a wealth of information about the planet’s geology. They’ve also been able to study rocks from Mars that have occasionally landed on Earth.

Several places on Mars – now a frigid desert – have shown evidence of a warmer and wetter environment early in the planet’s history though not necessarily friendly for life.

Scientists said they still intend to drive Curiosity to the mountain but not until it drills into another rock at its current location. Since flight controllers on Earth will be out of touch with Mars spacecraft for most of next month due to a planetary alignment, the second drilling won’t get under way until May.

In the meantime, engineers are troubleshooting a computer problem on Curiosity, which has not been able to perform science experiments for days.

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Comments (30)

Al J Zira
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 1:50am
The difference between the Rocknest Sand Shadow and the John Klein Drill Powder is astounding! So now what?

Do us all a favor and prove to the idiots that global warming is a lie.

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gladwing
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 1:16pm
No prove of the world wide flood? Check out these sites: http://www.creationscience.com, http://www.discovery institute.org , creation.com. These sources show the problems that evolution theory is having with the assumptions of macro evolution and uniformitarianism. Also, the complexity of life is so much greater than Darwin imagined that these systems could not possibly have developed by natural forces, just as a car could not a be a product evolution but is designed by an intelligent designer. Please do your own homework and look at both sides of the evolution vs. creation debate!

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- Sayit1
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 5:58pm
  well said. ; )
  
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jungle J
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:16am
nasa staffed by liars cheaters and government leeches.

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ireport uderide
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:34am
Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed “the man in the moon,” and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Journal of Discourses, Volume 13, page 271.

Oh my!
Somehow I’ve mistakenly copy and pasted a statement from Journal of Discourses, Voume 13, page 271. made by Brigham Young on 4/24/1879
My bad.

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HuskerDave
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:14am
I realize this was jipped from the AP, but I despise poorly-written articles.

“It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet.”

The rover is not “tech-savvy.” Rover’s aren’t savvy about anything. They’re machines. The rover might be more technically-challenging to operate. It is not “tech-savvy,” any more than my television set is learning needlepoint as a hobby.

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- txswalker
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:37am
  “It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet.”
  
  And it should be “anything that has landed on the red planet before.”You could also drop before compleatly
  
  Report this comment
rochrealtor
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 8:01am
Sorry guy’s The Bible has nothing in it about mars! We can save a lot of money by reading Genesis!

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- Goji
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 3:55pm
  When they say life, they mean microbial at the most…
  
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fedlibertarian
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 2:23am
And guess what…. there was life before this current iteration on earth too.

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puravida56
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:38am
The bible does not mention prior life on Mars, so the NASA scientists must be wrong.

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- thereyougoagain
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 3:46pm
  # puravida56
  
  Perhaps you are commenting on a different article! Facts in this article are:
  
  1. According the NASA scientists Mars is made of dirt! (WOW)
  2. Life could exist on Mars because Mars is very similar to Earth! (double WOW)
  
  In this article NASA scientists did NOT suggest life existed now or in the past!
  
  Alas “evolutionist” can be so funny…
  
  Report this comment
hi
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 12:07am
“It has been slow going as engineers learn to handle the rover, which is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet.”

They need to get some 12 year old gamers in there to show them how to do it.

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ltb
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 11:58pm
It’s kind of weird how scientists believe there was a worldwide flood on Mars, but refuse to believe something like that ever happened on Earth. It’s also weird how the polar caps on Mars expand and contract in unison with the Earth’s polar caps, almost as if the pollution on Earth migrates to Mars and causes global warming there too. Of course, I guess it’s possible that the Sun is responsible… Nah.

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- blinknight
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 4:01am
  There’s nothing odd about accounting for evidence. There is no evidence that there was a global flood on this planet. There may be evidence of water across much of the surface of Mars, but we’re a long way from knowing that definitively.
  
  We definitively and beyond all doubt know there was never a ‘flood’ as described in the Bible.
  
  Report this comment
- rochrealtor
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 9:14am
  @blinknight there is tons of proof the world was flooded. Where do you get your information?
  
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- Eoghan51
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:42am
  But who knows if the writer of that book in the bible literally meant the world or if it was just the world that they knew at the time. I mean its not like they knew that there were other continents at the time of the flood.
  
  Report this comment
- ltb
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:59am
  blinknight, You’d have to be a complete idiot to be so confident about the history of a planet that’s 34 million miles away, especially considering the fact that only a couple of tiny patches on its surface have been explored by unmanned robots. You’re not an idiot are you?
  
  Report this comment
ryukidn
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 11:52pm
I KNEW it!! The progressives really ARE from Mars – just look how they’ve destroyed life there, already!! Dammit … hang on America, this could get ugly!!

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media-bias-steals-elections
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 10:42pm
I thought you could see microbes under a microscope, does this probe really exist? You can’t detect microbes? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but really, uh, not really interested? If you want to send humans there, don’t you think microbe detection would be a good idea? Palmface?

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MRARGUELLES267
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:31pm
It would be cool to find life on another planet. Even though there is a very, very low chance of finding extraterrestrial life in the universe. The other great idea would be to colonize Mars in the future. That would be awesome!

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Anonymous T. Irrelevant
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:29pm
Is there life in the White House?

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- Stoic one
  Posted on March 12, 2013 at 10:06pm
  No it has been renamed “Mordor”
  
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- gb123
  Posted on March 12, 2013 at 10:56pm
  I think there is one dog , a Portugese thingamy, but that’s about it.
  
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- Whatmeworry-never
  Posted on March 12, 2013 at 11:09pm
  @Stoic so true and he is Sauron see he even wears his Ring of power on his hand. DHS is his Orcs, his Czars are his Ring Wraiths. Does that make Rand Paul Gandalf? Glenn Beck must be Elrond, now if the two of them could just forge an alliance to attack the Iron gate all should be fine and we should be able to overthrow this Dark Lord. Remember our war cry, “For the Shire”
  
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tharpdevenport
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:20pm
In relate news, a rover was sent over to Congress to drill in the heads of all Congressinal members to see if life once exited in their brains. Results thus far have shown Rei, Pelosi, Jackson Lee, and Schultz’s heads to be empty and void of life.

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electroencephalographic
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:16pm
Genius.

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Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:07pm
Can we send a rover inside Bidens head to find out “Did intelligence ever exist in the barren world that exists there now”?

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- resme
  Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:13pm
  It would come back “inconclusive”.
  
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- Stoic one
  Posted on March 12, 2013 at 9:23pm
  NO!….we have proof of stupidity now. If he ever was intelligent – it is irrelevant today.
  
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