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Old 11-30-2012, 08:10 PM   #156
Edward64
Head Coach
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Oh well ... yawn.

Mars Discovery: Curiosity Rover's 'Earth-Shaking' Find Downplayed By NASA
Quote:
Rumors of a big discovery began swirling earlier this month, after an NPR story quoted Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger as saying that the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument had recently gathered data "for the history books."

SAM is capable of identifying organic compounds, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. So many people assumed that Curiosity had detected organic compounds in the Martian soil.

But that's not the case, officials said.

"Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which manages Curiosity's mission, wrote in a mission update today. "At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics."

Don't expect a bombshell announcement.
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