RocketSTEM Issue #2 - April 2013 | Page 4

This mosaic shows Curiosity rover’s arm on Sol 149 (Jan. 5, 2013) at Yellowknife Bay basin where the rover has found widespread evidence for flowing water and discovered hydrated mineral veins and concretions around the rock ledge ahead and by the slithery chain Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo of narrow protruding rocks known as Snake River. Mission Accomplished! Curiosity discovers a habitable environment for life on Mars By Ken Kremer As NASA’s Curiosity rover begins her eighth month exploring the Red Planet since the nail-biting touchdown inside Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, she has made the most amazing finding thus far. After analyzing the first powder ever drilled from the interior of a Martian rock, Curiosity discovered key chemical ingredients necessary for life to have thrived on early Mars billions of years ago. Collecting those first particles bored from inside a rock on a planet beyond Earth marks a historic feat in humankind’s exploration of the cosmos - and was crucial for achieving Curiosity’s goal to determine whether Mars ever 02 02 could have supported microbial life, past or present. Curiosity has now achieved her goal of discovering a habitable environment on the Red Planet, mission scientists reported at a mid March briefing held at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Data collected by Curiosity’s two analytical chemistry labs (SAM and CheMin) confirm that the gray powder collected from inside the sedimentary rock of mudstone where the rover is now exploring near an ancient Martian stream bed - possesses a significant amount of phyllosilicate clay minerals; indicating an environment where Martian microbes could once have thrived in the distant past. Clay minerals form in neutral water which is much more conducive to supporting possible Martian life forms compared to the highly acidic watery environments found by NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers over the past decade. “We have found a habitable environment which 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 John Grotzinger, the chief scientist for the Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory mission at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Curiosity cored the rocky sample from a fine-grained, sedimentary outcrop, named John Klein, inside www.RocketSTEM.org