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
ExoMars (rover) ExoMars (rover) The ExoMars rover is a planned robotic Mars rover, part of the international ExoMars programme led by the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation. The plan calls for a Russian launch vehicle, an ESA carrier module and a Russian lander that will deploy the rover to Mars' surface, scheduled to launch in July 2020. Once safely landed, the solar powered rover would begin a seven-month (218-sol) mission to search for the existence of past life on Mars. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, launched in 2016, will operate as the rover's data-relay satellite. The rover is