January 24, 2014

An Opportunity for life: finding Mars’ most liveable mud


Coinciding with ten years of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Project, research published today in Science has found some of the oldest evidence of past water on Mars – and confirmed it was ideal to nurture life.

Found in ancient mudstones at Mars’ Endeavour Crater, the geochemical data collected by the Opportunity Rover shows that water was almost fresh. It would have been, almost four billion years ago, the most liveable mud on Mars.