Mars Rover Finds Stronq Evidence of Ancient Water

摘要

NASA's Opportunity rover, which landed on Mars nearly eight years ago, has discovered a thin, bright mineral vein along the rim of a huge crater called Endeavour. This mineral is almost certainly gypsum that was deposited by liquid water billions of years ago, researchers said. "This is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover," Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Opportunity's principal investigator, told reporters Dec. 8 during the 2011 winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. After a three-year trek, Opportunity reached the 22-kilometer Endeavour Crater in August. While poking around Endeavour's rim recently, it found the mineral vein, which is about 51 centimeters long and about the width of a human thumb.