If you believe in Martians, the next story is definitely for you.
NASA's space rover Curiosity has literally scooped up what scientists say are the ingredients of life from the Red Planet.
John Zarrella has more from Miami.
NASA scientists are certainly very, very excited this evening.
You know, back when they chose the landing site for Curiosity, the Gale Crater, they chose it for a reason.
They believed that water once flowed in that area of Mars.
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.
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.
And, in fact, they proved today that they're right.
Mars has written the autobiography -- its autobiography in the rocks of Gale Crater. And we've just started deciphering that story.
So, Chapter 1, Yellowknife Bay. This was an ancient environment with the right elements --
minerals indicating a near neutral environment and slightly salty liquid water -- all the prerequisites to support life, a habitable environment.
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.
And then the dust was collected from the drill, scooped it up and put it in the onboard chemistry lab on Curiosity.
First time any Mars vehicle has had that capability to do that.
So they put that in the onboard chemistry lab. They analyzed it.
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.
Now, they have not proven that life existed on Mars -- that's still perhaps down the road.
And certainly they did not find evidence of life on Mars, but what they did find was evidence that,
in fact, the ingredients for life were at one time in Mars's ancient history present, at least in this spot on Mars.