Scientists reported on Thursday that NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover has found fresh evidence for the red planet’s past — and possibly present — habitability. The nuclear-powered rover has detected a variety of organic compounds, a requirement for life as it’s known on Earth, in 3-billion-year-old rocks deposited on the floor of Gale Crater. While organics were discovered by the rover earlier, the age and variety of the newly analyzed samples strengthen the case for a habitable environment in the past. “We found organic molecules in rocks from an ancient lakebed,” said Jen Eigenbrode, a research scientist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Those organic molecules could have come from life.”
