Nasa’s Curiosity rover finds conditions WERE once right for primitive life on Mars – and scientists say there was even DRINKABLE water on the red planet
Worldwide, Daily news | ankakh | March 13, 2013 20:26
Curiosity rover has found that the red planet could have once supported primitive life.
An analysis of a rock sample collected by the rover found key chemical ingredients.
‘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 there, you would have been able to drink it,’ said John Grotzinger, Curiosity’s project scientist.
Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon – some of the key chemical ingredients for life – in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
Clues to this habitable environment come from data returned by the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments.
The data indicated theYellowknifeBayarea the rover is exploring was the end of an ancient river system or an intermittently wet lake bed that could have provided chemical energy and other favorable conditions for microbes.
The bedrock also is fine-grained mudstone and shows evidence of multiple periods of wet conditions, including nodules and veins.
An additional drilled sample will be used to help confirm these results for several of the trace gases analyzed by the SAM instrument.
Scientists now plan to work with Curiosity in the ‘YellowknifeBay’ area for many more weeks before beginning a long drive to Gale Crater’s central mound,MountSharp.
Investigating the stack of layers exposed onMountSharp, where clay minerals and sulfate minerals have been identified from orbit, may add information about the duration and diversity of habitable conditions.
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