Water on Mars of these salts". NASA also reported that Jake M rock, a rock encountered by "Curiosity" on the way to Glenelg, was a mugearite and very similar to terrestrial mugearite rocks. On December 9, 2013, NASA reported that Mars once had a large freshwater lake inside Gale Crater, that could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life. On December 16, 2014, NASA reported detecting an unusual increase, then decrease, in the amounts of methane in the atmosphere of the planet Mars; in addition, organic chemicals were detected in powder drilled from a rock by the "Curiosity" rover. Also, based on
Sol (day on Mars) Mars Sol Date is defined mathematically as MSD = (Julian Date using International Atomic Time - 2451549.5 + "k")/1.02749125 + 44796.0, where "k" is a small correction of approximately 0.00014 d (or 12 s) due to uncertainty in the exact geographical position of the prime meridian at Airy-0 crater. The word "yestersol" was coined by the NASA Mars operations team early during the MER mission to refer to the previous sol (the Mars version of "yesterday"), and came into fairly wide use within that organization during the Mars Exploration Rover Mission of 2003. It was eventually picked up and used