Rover Findings

[Unorthodox]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/03/mars-rover-curiosity-life-nasa/1742213/

12:58PM EST December 3. 2012 - No Martians, but NASA's Curiosity rover reports that the first soil sample taken from Mars contains chlorine-laced compounds similar to ones seen on the Red Planet's frozen poles and tantalizing hints of others that could be precursors to life's chemistry.

NASA landed the $2.5 billion rover on Mars in August on a mission to search for signs of chemistry indicating whether habitable conditions for life once existed, or still exist, there. The soil sample results reported Monday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco contain hints of "organic" chemicals essential to biochemistry, but the rover team said more analysis is needed.

"We just don't know if these are indigenous to Mars, and it is going to take some time to work through," said mission chief scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech. The carbon compounds could be earthly contamination from the sampling instruments. Determining whether these compounds represent "some kind of biological material is well down the road for us," he added.

A true-color panorama taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars.(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

A sand

pit called Rocknest served up the first soil sample, its dirt largely made of iron minerals typical of the fine Martian dust coating the Red Planet. "It's finer than sugar, but coarser than flour," said mission imaging scientist Ken Edgett of Malin Space Systems in San Diego.

Speculation of dramatic chemistry results that preceded Monday's presentation led NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the rover, to issue a news release in advance, downplaying the results.

Since arriving in August, the nuclear-powered rover has traveled nearly 1,700 feet from its landing site inside the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater on Mars. Within a year, the rover will travel to apparent clay formations ringing Aeolis Mons, or "Mount Sharp," a mountain that rises 3.4 miles above the floor of the crater. The rover is now stationed near a rock it will inspect with a drill this week, another first for a Mars rover.

We just don't know if these are indigenous to Mars,

As I was guessing in one of the previous threads.  I bet the first sample came back positive, then the original excited announcment, but the second sample came back negative, which would point to calibration/contamination on the first sample.  Why they just can't come out and say that, though is beyond me.