The rover continues its studies 10 years after landing on the Red Planet

Jan 24, 2014 09:08 GMT  ·  By

The NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity, which is today celebrating its 10th anniversary on the surface of the Red Planet, has recently produced a new series of interesting scientific results, which confirm that our neighboring world once had a milder and wetter environment than it boasts today. 

While the fact that ancient conditions on Mars were more favorable to life was first established a couple of years ago, the exact mildness of the environment was never fully gaged. A new study centered on Opportunity's latest readings provides a wealth of new data on this topic.

Previous investigations of numerous rocks along its path told the rover and its science team that the ancient wet environment on the Red Planet featured very acidic and oxidizing conditions, potentially hampering the development of basic lifeforms.

However, data from the new research appear to suggest that ancient conditions were not so severe, and that the environment was significantly milder than first assumed. Details of the investigation were published in this week's issue of the top journal Science.

The paper was authored by Washington University in St. Louis (WUSL) professor Ray Arvidson, who is the deputy principal investigator for Opportunity. He explains that these latest discoveries from the long-lived rover represent a landmark in Mars sciences.

“These rocks are older than any we examined earlier in the mission, and they reveal more favorable conditions for microbial life than any evidence previously examined by investigations with Opportunity,” the mission official explains.

The rocks studied for this new investigation were found at Matijevic Hill, a landscape feature at the edge of Endeavour Crater. The latter is named for James Cook's British Navy research vessel HM Bark Endeavour, and for the NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour.

“The more we explore Mars, the more interesting it becomes. These latest findings present yet another kind of gift that just happens to coincide with Opportunity's 10th anniversary on Mars,” explains the lead scientist for the MER program at NASA, Michael Meyer.

“We're finding more places where Mars reveals a warmer and wetter planet in its history. This gives us greater incentive to continue seeking evidence of past life on Mars,” the official adds.

“We're looking at the legacy of Opportunity's first decade this week, but there's more good stuff ahead. We are examining a rock right in front of the rover that is unlike anything we've seen before. Mars keeps surprising us, just like in the very first week of the mission,” concludes the principal MER investigator, professor Steve Squyres from the Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York.