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If you believe in Martians, the next story is definitely for you.

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NASA's space rover Curiosity has literally scooped up what scientists say are the ingredients of life from the Red Planet.

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John Zarrella has more from Miami.

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NASA scientists are certainly very, very excited this evening.

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You know, back when they chose the landing site for Curiosity, the Gale Crater, they chose it for a reason.

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They believed that water once flowed in that area of Mars.

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And very early on in the Curiosity mission, they proved that, in fact, there was a dried-out river bed there, and in fact that one time water did flow in that area of Mars.

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And they believe because of that, there was a chance that the ingredients for life might very well be found in that river bed in the Gale Crater.

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And, in fact, they proved today that they're right.

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Mars has written the autobiography -- its autobiography in the rocks of Gale Crater. And we've just started deciphering that story.

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So, Chapter 1, Yellowknife Bay. This was an ancient environment with the right elements --

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minerals indicating a near neutral environment and slightly salty liquid water -- all the prerequisites to support life, a habitable environment.

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What they did was last month they drilled into a rock. It was the first time that they used Curiosity's drill to drill into a rock.

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And then the dust was collected from the drill, scooped it up and put it in the onboard chemistry lab on Curiosity.

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First time any Mars vehicle has had that capability to do that.

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So they put that in the onboard chemistry lab. They analyzed it.

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And lo and behold, they find out that there's all of this life soup, these ingredients in this sample, things like sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide.

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Now, they have not proven that life existed on Mars -- that's still perhaps down the road.

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And certainly they did not find evidence of life on Mars, but what they did find was evidence that,

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in fact, the ingredients for life were at one time in Mars's ancient history present, at least in this spot on Mars.