WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — On this day in history, NASA announced that its Curiosity rover found signs that might have pointed to life on Mars.
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On Dec. 9, 2013, NASA scientists reported that the rover had discovered signs of a water hole that existed around 3.5 billion years ago.
The Curiosity rover was near the equator when it discovered this.
Scientists said that the water was not salty or acidic and had nutrients that would have been able to support microbes.
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“This just looks like a pretty darn ordinary Earth-like lake in terms of its chemistry. If you were desperate, you could have a drink of this stuff,” project scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology said in an Associated Press article published that day.
The lake would have likely existed for tens or hundreds of thousands of years — and even after it dried up, it was possible for microbes to migrate underground to continue surviving.
Mars wasn’t always the barren, red landscape that we know now. In the past, it was likely much more tropical. Due to the presence of that much water, scientists believe that it’s possible the planet once supported life.
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AP quoted another scientist, David Paige with the University of California, Los Angeles, as saying, “The new results definitely reinforce the idea that past life on Mars was possible.”
Earlier this year in March, Curiosity reached a new area of Mars to continue investigating past bodies of water and the possibility of life on the now-dry planet. NASA said that the rover is following a formation that seems to have been carved by a river at one point.
