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NEW SCIENTIST
NASA scientists believe they are days away from concluding whether or not Mars once had water using data from the Mars rover Opportunity, they revealed on Thursday.
Opportunity, which has been roaming inside a 20-metre crater on a plateau called Meridiani Planum for nearly five weeks, has been focusing its attention for the past three on a 30-metre outcrop of bedrock and its immediate environs. It has taken microscopic images and spectroscope data and ground portions of the rock surface to peer beneath its coating of dust.
The site was chosen for its rich deposits of haematite, suggestive of a watery formation, and for its location within a region that some scientists say shows signs of once having been an ocean basin.
The craft is now in the midst of grinding and examining several spots on the outcrop, to gather information about the details of the finely layered structure of the rock, says deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson.
Together with the chemical and mineralogical data already collected, this should provide the information needed to decide between the various theories - volcanic or sedimentary - about how the rock and soil in this region were formed, Arvidson says.
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