Mars Rover Finds Conditions Once May Have Supported Life

A Martian rock sample tested by Curiosity, the NASA rover that landed on the planet seven months ago, contains clay minerals suggesting conditions on Mars may have once supported living microbes, the U.S. space agency said.

The Rover identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon -- some of the key ingredients for life -- in powder drilled last month out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement. The sample was collected at a site a few hundred yards away from where the rover found evidence in September of an ancient stream bed.