By drilling into Mars for the first time and analyzing a martian
rock in unprecedented detail, Curiosity team members have shown
that eons ago, microorganisms could have lived on Mars. At a
spot on the floor of Gale crater-the site the rover has been
studying since landing on Mars last August -- there was mud
long-wetted by benign waters, a ready supply of the essential
elements of life as we know it, and energy enough to power life.
The search for the remains of ancient life was not so lucky.
Curiosity found "all the things we were really hoping for in a
habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for
NASA's Mars Exploration Program at headquarters in Washington.
Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena made it a bit more personal:
"We have found a habitable environment so benign that if you
were on the planet when water was around, you would have been
able to drink it." The news of certain martian habitability came
Tuesday at a Curiosit