Washington, Dec eleven: The Curiosity rover has found proof of an ancient lake on Mars that millions of years past may have sustained life for long periods of your time, NASA said.

“Quite honestly, it simply appearance terribly Earth-like,” the lead person of the Curiosity mission, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, said.

Meanwhile another team of NASA scientists aforesaid that, in step with observations and measurements created by Curiosity, the chance of exposure to radiation shouldn’t be an obstacle for manned missions to Mars within the future.

The instruments on Curiosity – a robotic rover that landed on Mars august 6, 2012 – have compiled data facultative calculations that show this shallow fresh-water lake to possess existed three.7 million years past.

The scientists take this as proof that livable  environments may have existed on Mars abundant previous typically believed up to currently.

A research team from NASA’s Mars science laboratory and Imperial faculty London have analysed samples of matter rocks referred to as mudstones in an exceedingly place known as Yellowknife Bay in air current Crater wherever the rover landed, close to the Mars equator.

The mudstones show that air current Crater, a basin 150 km in diameter, command a lake some 3.7 million years ago. The scientists believe the lake may have existed for tens or many thousands of years.