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Rover Finds More Signs of Past Mars Water

Posted on: Thursday, 1 April 2004, 06:00 CST

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Spirit rover discovered more evidence of past water activity on Mars, although not in as great amounts as the twin rover Opportunity found on the other side of the planet, mission scientists said Thursday.

The findings come from analysis of a rock dubbed Mazatzal in the Gusev Crater region where Spirit landed on Jan. 3. Since then Spirit has been overshadowed by Opportunity as it found signs that extensive water, possibly a salty sea, once covered its landing site on Meridiani Planum.

"Evidence at water at Gusev Crater has been hard to come by," Hap McSween, a science team member from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, acknowledged at a Jet Propulsion Laboratory news conference.

But he said findings that Mazatzal had three separate coatings "suggest very strongly that Gusev did have its own water supply."

"This is not water that sloshed around the surface, as it apparently did at Meridiani. We're talking about small amounts of water possibly in the ground," he said.

Mazatzal is a basalt, a volcanic rock, that clearly has been altered by "events that had something to do with fluids," he said.

Flight director Chris Lewicki said both Spirit and Opportunity were continuing to perform well.

He said that a computer file problem that Opportunity developed this week was solved and would not happen again, but he suggested that it might be an inkling of a "bit of age starting to show."

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On the Net:

JPL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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