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
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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
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