A Nasa rover scouting for signs of past water on Mars has found the strongest evidence yet – a vein of gypsum, more commonly known as plaster of Paris, a mineral deposited by water.

A Nasa rover scouting for signs of past water on Mars has found the strongest evidence yet – a vein of gypsum, more commonly known as plaster of Paris, a mineral deposited by water.
Nasa scientists say that the results ‘just scream water’. The vein would have been deposited by water flowing through a fracture in the roc.
Nasa scientists have anticipated results ever since Opportunity reached the 14-mile Endeavour crater, which has older exposed rocks than any craters the Rover has seen in its seven-year mission.
The rover, called Opportunity, and its twin, Spirit, arrived on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004.
Over the years, the rovers, aided by several orbiting spacecraft, have returned a convincing body of evidence that Mars was not always as cold and dry as it is today.


The most convincing proof, unveiled this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, is a thin vein of gypsum laced inside and protruding from an ancient rock along the rim of a 96-mile (154 km) wide crater called Endeavour.
Gypsum – commonly known as plaster of Paris – typically forms from water flowing through rock.
‘This is the single most bulletproof observation that I can think of that we’ve made this entire mission,’ Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, lead researcher for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers said