Mars Curiosity Rover Finds Further Evidence of Past Existence of Water on Red Planet

Staying true to its mission, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took off from its first waypoint en route to its destination, Mount Sharp, but not before examining sandstones evident of a wet past, according to a news release.

The waypoint, originally picked out based off of satellite images of the Gale Crater, is on Curiosity's predetermined route to Mount Sharp. The rover used instruments attached to its arm last week to dig for evidence and found further evidence of a wet environment on the Red Planet's surface.

"We examined pebbly sandstone deposited by water flowing over the surface, and veins or fractures in the rock," said Dawn Sumner of University of California, Davis, a Curiosity science team leader in planning the stop. "We know the veins are younger than the sandstone because they cut through it, but they appear to be filled with grains like the sandstone."

The first waypoint, called "Darwin," is one of five possible stops on Curiosity's ultimate destination: Mount Sharp, a mountain at the center of the Gale Crater believed to hold many mysteries to Mars' history.

The various waypoints were spotted using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and were picked out to collect information on Mars' geological history.

"We want to understand the history of water in Gale Crater," Sumner said. "Did the water flow that deposited the pebbly sandstone at Waypoint 1 occur at about the same time as the water flow at Yellowknife Bay? If the same fluid flow produced the veins here and the veins at Yellowknife Bay, you would expect the veins to have the same composition. We see that the veins are different, so we know the history is complicated. We use these observations to piece together the long-term history."

Despite reports last week that Curiosity could not find any traces of methane in the Martian atmosphere, NASA and other scientists have held onto hope that microbial life did at one point exist on the planet. Curiosity has returned a trove of evidence and some supports the theory that water did exist once, making it possible for life.