NASA’S Curiosity rover has found an immense lake providing evidence that it accommodated life centuries ago. Scientists are enthusiastic on this new development in their mission to find life on Mars.
Curiosity arrived on the Martian surface August last year. On its journey it encountered the Yellowknife Bay, where it discovered evidence of an ancient lake. The area is full of mudstone comparable to the ancient rocks found in Southern California.
John Grotzinger, lead author of the study and a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) who is the project scientist for the Curiosity mission, said that the newfound Earth-like lake is one of the most habitable places in the Solar system. Its salinity is low with the right acidity levels and chemical content that are required by living organisms to thrive in it.
Moreover, the findings revealed veins in the rocks suggesting that the flow of water continued even after the death of the lake. This water source could have allowed living organisms to survive up to tens of millions of years after the drought.
Aside from these findings, Curiosity was also able to gather evidence of chemicals required by living organisms: hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. Although the scientists are uncertain that they have found sufficient evidence of hydrocarbons – the molecules that contain carbon and a probable signature that life existed – they are hopeful that they have just not stumbled upon it. Other scientists however criticize that if they did find hydrocarbons, they should have identified other forms aside from the in-house laboratories of Curiosity.
"Most of us feel there is a good chance that there's something there. It's just that we haven't been able to tease it out at the level of confidence we'd like,” said Grotzinger.
Still, scientists are enthusiastic of the recent development of their study which had contributed towards the pursuit of evidence of life on Mars.
Douglas Ming, NASA planetary scientist said, "Is this the smoking gun that says there was life on Mars? No. Is this a smoking gun that this was a habitable environment? There's pretty good evidence for that. We have an environment that is very much … like on Earth."
The study was published on the December 9 issue of Science.
