There is no cure for Curiosity

So to kick off this blog I thought that i'd look at a possible breakthrough, not on Earth, but on the Red Planet.

The Mars Curiosity rover is about 10 feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall - about the size of a full grown male elephant. It has an extendable arm of 7 feet and weighs about 900 kilograms - much less than an elephant! The Curiosity rover landed on Mars on 5th August 2012 and since then has begun an adventure to find evidence of life.

It has been reported that the Mars Curiosity rover has stumbled upon a chemical environment that may have once supported life on Mars. The Mars rover drilled into the rock amongst an area named Yellowknife Bay which could have once been part of an ancient river system. Although difficult to believe, the sample of rock collected from Yellowknife Bay was analysed by x-ray diffraction and chromatography to reveal that the rock was composed of igneous minerals - a fifth of which was clay minerals. This could be evidence of water since the clay minerals found are a product of the reaction between water and the igneous minerals discovered. Analysis also showed that the oxidation state of the compounds was not constant. These characteristics, put together, could prove a habitat in which microbes could survive happily.

Although this may not be a breakthrough to all scientists since evidence of surface water and clay minerals has been discovered before, this is really encouraging so early on in the Mars Science Laboratory mission.