Mars Mystery: Has Curiosity Rover Made Big Discovery?

[pwaldo]

http://news.yahoo.com/mars-mystery-c...183538041.html

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest.

The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.

SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently.

"This data is gonna be one for the history books," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told NPR. "It's looking really good."

The rover team won't be ready to announce just what SAM found for several weeks, NPR reported, as scientists want to check and double-check the results. Indeed, Grotzinger confirmed to SPACE.com that the news will come out at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place Dec. 3-7 in San Francisco.

[drtom2005]

Sweet. If this is what they think it is(implied in the article), life. The next question will be Europa's ocean, and other solar systems.

[Zimbow]

Awesome!!! Can't wait to see what it's going to be!

[meuandthelot]

Makes sense, since we are stardust...

It's the pictures and classified data samples returning that intrigue me :)

[andrewconnors9]

this will be very interesting! get that news out pronto