Extraterrestrial life of primitive life near the Rio Tinto river in Spain. NASA officials soon distanced NASA from the scientists' claims, and Stoker herself backed off from her initial assertions. Though such methane findings are still debated, support among some scientists for the existence of life on Mars exists. In November 2011, NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory that landed the "Curiosity" rover on Mars. It is designed to assess the past and present habitability on Mars using a variety of scientific instruments. The rover landed on Mars at Gale Crater in August 2012. The Gaia hypothesis stipulates that any planet with
Rover (space exploration) The Marsokhod was a " heavy" Soviet rover (hybrid, with both controls telecommand and automatic) aimed at Mars, part of the Mars 4NM and scheduled to be released (after 1973 according to the plans of 1970) launched by a N1 rocket that never arrived to fly successfully. The Mars Pathfinder mission included "Sojourner", the first rover to successfully deploy on another planet. NASA, the space agency of the United States, launched Mars Pathfinder on 4 December 1996; it landed on Mars in a region called Chryse Planitia on 4 July 1997. From its landing until the final data transmission on