PASADENA, Calif., Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. space rover Curiosity is providing critical information about Mars' past and present to help plan future missions, NASA officials said.
In a little more than a year on Mars, the unmanned mobile science laboratory determined the age of a martian rock, found evidence the planet could have sustained microbial life, took first readings of radiation on the surface, and showed how natural erosion could reveal the building blocks of life, NASA said in a release.