What Else is NASA Hiding From Us?

While the Martian conspiracy thickens, an unanticipated clue emerges from the planet’s “soft soil”. Is this the evidence that proves NASA lied to us all along?

In 2003, the renowned space agency launched its robotic Spirit rover towards Mars. After a successful landing on the Red Planet in 2004, the rover collected precious data until it got stuck in mud. Yes, you heard it well – mud or soft soil on the dusty, arid planet. From 2009 to 2010 NASA tried to free the captive wheels of their precious Spirit, but without success.

In their attempt to unlock the rover however, the assigned team of scientists stumbled upon the most curious find – traces of water and ice. Yes, NASA already knew about the wet past of Mars, they might even know about the former civilization that inhabited the planet in its distant past for all I know. Check out the picture below showing the trail left behind by Spirit rover stuck in the so-called “soft sand”.

A white trail is also seen behind the robot. Could it be ice, or is it something else? Well, according to scientists, the white substance is in fact silica, a chemical compound usually found in nature as quartz crystals, but also in various living organisms.

Albert Yen, a Curiosity science team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained how the silica ended up there, after Curiosity rover discovered a high concentration of it at some of the investigated sites on Mount Sharp.

These high-silica compositions are a puzzle. You can boost the concentration of silica either by leaching away other ingredients while leaving the silica behind, or by bringing in silica from somewhere else, Yen said.

Either of those processes involve water. If we can determine which happened, we’ll learn more about other conditions in those ancient wet environments.”

This proves NASA knew about water on Mars and its distant and probably inhabited wet environment for at least 6 years, when the first photos from the Spirit rover arrived. As reported in an official article, the discovery came as a surprise, leaving room for heated debate regarding its origins.

Apart from presenting a puzzle about the history of the region where Curiosity is working, the recent findings on Mount Sharp have intrigued threads linked to what an earlier NASA rover, Spirit, found halfway around Mars.

Other pictures prove the same – the existence of ancient Martian lakes. So why did they admit about water only recently if they knew about it for so many years? Is the white trail silica, or could it be something else such as permafrost? Are they preparing us for a far greater discovery?