Old Mars rover makes significant find

NASA’s aging Opportunity rover on Mars has just made what may be one of its most significant discoveries to date. “If you look at all of the water-related discoveries that have been made by Opportunity, the vast majority of them point to water that was a very low pH — it was acid,” said professor Steve Squyres, the rover’s principal investigator. This is water that was much more favourable for things like pre-biotic chemistry — the kind of chemistry that could lead to the origin of life.” These results complement nicely those of NASA’s newer rover Curiosity, which has also identified clays at its landing site almost halfway around the planet’s equator. The old robot made its find at a location called Cape York, which is located on the rim of a 22-km-wide crater known as Endurance.