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
Mars sample-return mission NASA and ESA called ExoMars, would launch in 2018 with unspecified missions to return the sample itself expected in the 2020–2022 time frame. The cancellation of the caching rover MAX-C and later NASA withdrawal from ExoMars, pushed back a sample-return mission to an undetermined date. Due to budget limitations the MAX-C mission, which was the first NASA-ESA mission leading to a MSR, was canceled in 2011 and the overall plan in 2012. The pull-out was described as "traumatic" for the science community. However, in April 2018, a letter of intent was signed by NASA and ESA that may provide a