Curiosity Rover’s Secret Historic Breakthrough?
Speculation Centers on Organic Molecules On Nov. 20, a comment made by the lead scientist on the Curiosity team to NPR about a historic finding on Mars led to a frenzy of speculation about what the rover may have found. NASA became very tight-lipped and said that nothing would be revealed before the American Geophysical Union conference two weeks later. So we talked to planetary scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory about what the discovery was likely to be. “If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,” he said. While the actual story turned out to be a little less exciting than Martians, the rover could still find evidence that there is or was life of some sort on Mars.
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