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Red Planet shows signs of life

Posted by EU Times on Dec 17th, 2014 // No Comment

390101 Mars water

NASA’s Curiosity rover has sent back scientific data suggesting new evidence of water on Mars.

The rover released pictures indicating that the Gale Crater on Mars used to be a huge lake of water far back in history.

With the new evidence of water, the Red Planet must have been suitable for some form of life in ancient times.

NASA also maintains that Mount Sharp in Mars was shaped by sediments within a lake bed.

This interpretation of the rover’s findings suggest that the Red Planet used to have a climate which could produce long-lasting lakes at different locations, Curiosity deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, and his colleagues said in a statement.

If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on Mars,” explained Vasavada, who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.

Curiosity project scientist, John Grotzinger, from the California Institute of Technology, also said, “We are making headway in solving the mystery of Mount Sharp. Where there’s now a mountain, there may have once been a series of lakes.”

He added, “The great thing about a lake that occurs repeatedly, over and over, is that each time it comes back it is another experiment to tell you how the environment works.”

From its 2012 landing site to its current work site, the rover Curiosity is going 500 feet or 150 meters deep into the lowest sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, providing more data about the crater floor that gives indication of past lakes existing at about 5 miles or 8 kilometers.

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Read More Stories About: Alien Life, Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity Rover, Gale Crater, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, John Grotzinger, Mount Sharp, NASA, Pasadena

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