Space Current Event

Name of article: Martian microbes, maybe
Author: Stephen Ornes
Date: March 21, 2013
Link: http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/2013/03/billions-of-years-ago-mars-could-have-been-teeming-with-very-small-martians/

During February 2013 the NASA Curiosity rover found a powdery rock sample which have shown that Mars might have been able to support life billions of years ago. Since scientists already know that Mars had freshwater, but now with the collected rock samples they have more evidence that Mars's watery environment could have supported microbes. Last August, the Curiosity Rover landed into the Gale Crater, but soon came to the Yellowknife Bay which looks like a place where a stream could have spilled into a larger body of water. This is where Curiosity took its first sample. The Curiosity Rover also has a drill which allows it to collect rock samples from underneath Mars's surface instead of just taking rocks that have been blown by winds. When Curiosity scooped up a rock, two of it's tools identified it's chemical structure showing that it consisted of 6 different elements which could have supplied energy for the martian microbes and the microbes could feed on them. However, this is only the beginning of Curiosity's exciting adventure on Mars, and scientists need more samples of these elements in rocks on Mars to understand what it was like on the red planet in the distant past.

I think that this is a big success to scientists because they found another clue to life on Mars. I found this article interesting because I didn't know how scientists could find out if there was life on a planet. Also, before reading this article I didn't know that scientists knew for sure that there was water on Mars. In conclusion, I think that this was a very important discovery for scientists but they will need more evidence to get an idea what was happening on Mars billions of years ago.