Although the features haven't been proved to be biologically caused, they closely resemble features found in hot springs at El Tatio, Chile. So at the very least, we've got a probable ancient hot spring site, and one that potentially harbored life at some point. These features have been overlooked in Spirit's data for the last 10 years, give or take.

What else have we missed?

mk:

    "However, because of the challenges in obtaining unambiguous evidence in situ, coordinated microscopic and compositional analyses of samples returned to laboratories on Earth may be required to reach a robust conclusion as to the presence or absence of past Martian life in these rocks," Ruff and Farmer stated.

For many years I have dreamed of making a robot that returns from Mars with samples. I think it could be crowdfunded. Basically, get 100M in crowdfunding, then contract it.


posted 2704 days ago