More Mars pics and the following author says that the Curiosity Rover is going to officially reveal the existence of past life on Mars-or maybe recent too.

From Coast To Coast 07-02-13

Former space science museum curator and former NASA consultant Richard C. Hoaglanddiscussed the latest discoveries of the Mars rover as well as updates on space and energy exploration. While the rover Opportunity continues its mission on Mars, the newer rover Curiosity, which landed on the Red Planet at Gale Crater about a year ago, has been "making the most astonishing discoveries," he said, adding that NASA has been posting "mind-blowing" photographs without comment. Curiosity is the mission that's going to officially unveil what's really on Mars, he added.

"Gale Crater is a stunning treasure trove of ancient, intelligently-made artifacts, currently in ruin," and this is the reason the site was chosen, as part of a "safe disclosure" plan, Hoagland continued. Among the artifacts are objects that look like a shoe, an engine, and a cylinder (seerelated photos), he detailed. The location Curiosity landed on is basically "the destroyed, flooded, buried, and then eroded suburbs of an ancient urban complex," built around a huge mountain in the middle of Gale Crater, he asserted. On Earth, you have a vigorous oxygen atmosphere, so things rust and oxidize but Mars "has been for millions of years a giant planetary museum with no oxygen, so things rust at an incredibly tiny rate," he explained. For more on the Curiosity, see his new paper,