…our science team is composed not of nine men but of 472 men and women representing 13 different countries. In the 16 months since Curiosity’s arrival, we have already achieved our main goals. Just eight months into the mission, the rover discovered that beneath its six flight-grade aluminum wheels was the dried-out husk of an ancient streambed and lake of fresh water. The kind of water that could have supported simple microorganisms  —  low in salt, free of strong acid and full of nutrients. A human might even have been able to drink the stuff, though you may not have wanted to bottle it for resale.

The S.U.V.-size rover  —  with its laboratory of spectrometers, lasers, X-ray diffractometer, radiation detector, neutron generator, 17 cameras, and its own weather station  —  has pushed deep into the environmental records of early Martian history. Data from Curiosity show that sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon  —  some of the key chemical ingredients for life  —  were available to microbes, had they ever originated on Mars. These primitive organisms could have fed on the chemical energy stored in rocks and minerals, just like a flashlight bulb lights up by using the chemicals stored in a dry cell battery. It all depends on the state of mineral oxidation, the flow of electrons through rocks and microbes, and chemolithoautotrophy (if you want to get into it). Some microbes on Earth survive by consuming exactly this type of energy source. They eat rocks. Might the same have occurred on ancient Mars? It is pretty cool, and it brings us closer to finding out if life ever originated somewhere other than Earth.

As you read this, Curiosity is driving across a flat plain and closing the distance on the base of Mount Sharp, a massive mountain formed from a stack of layered rocks three times higher than the Grand Canyon is deep. Of course, moving forward at about half a football field per day, we are still many months away. That’s O.K. The roads are unpaved and the nearest mechanic is millions of miles distant.

via The World of Mars – NYTimes.com.