Armstrong Admits to Doping, 'One Big Lie'

Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, admitting to using banned substances for years.

"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said. "I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there. The truth isn't what I said.

"I'm a flawed character, as I well know," Armstrong added. "All the fault and all the blame here falls on me."

In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former Armstrong teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.

George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo

Lance Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape Watch Video

Lance Armstrong Admits Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs Watch Video

Lance Armstrong's Oprah Confession: The Consequences Watch Video

The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.

As a result of USADA's findings, Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles. Soon, longtime sponsors including Nike began to abandon him, too.

READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?

Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."

He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone. He would not, however, give Winfrey the details of when, where and with whom he doped during seven winning Tours de France between 1999 and 2005.

He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.

"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.

READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions

PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present

PHOTOS: Tour de France 2012

Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive" from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.

"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.

"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."

"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.

"No," he said.

Armstrong said he thought taking the drugs was similar to filling his tires with air and bottle with water. He never thought of his actions as cheating, but "leveling the playing field" in a sport rife with doping.

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Life expectancy lower in US than other rich countries

WEALTHY it may be, but healthy it is not. The US population experiences poorer health at all stages of life than the populations of 16 other rich countries.

Despite leading the world in pioneering anti-smoking laws, cancer screening and controlling high blood pressure, the US trails its richer "peer" countries in almost all other measures of health and longevity, says a US National Research Council report published last week.

At 75 years, men in the US have the lowest life expectancy in the group, while women have a life expectancy of 81 years - higher only than Denmark.

In nine categories of ill health ranging from infant mortality rates to the prevalence of sexually transmitted disease, US citizens consistently came at or near the bottom of the table.

"I was stunned by how pervasive the disadvantages were across so many factors," says Steve Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, who chaired the report panel.

Woolf and his colleagues say that the problem is less to do with faults in the US health system, and more to do with behaviours that put US citizens at greater risk. "They consume the most calories per person, have higher rates of drug abuse, are less likely to use seat belts, and are more likely to use firearms in acts of violence," says Woolf.

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Floods swamp Indonesia capital, 19,000 homeless

JAKARTA: Floods which have made more than 19,000 people homeless and killed three brought parts of the Indonesian capital to a standstill Thursday, with even the president forced to roll up his trousers.

The waist-deep muddy waters paralysed much of the centre of Jakarta, home to 20 million people and already notorious for its chaotic traffic.

Drivers were stuck in snaking queues for hours in the morning and cyclists pushed bikes with only the handlebars and seats visible.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was pictured in the grounds of the presidential palace with his trousers rolled up to the knee, brown water lapping his calves and threatening to flood the shrubbery.

"Jakarta is flooded: hopefully there won't be too many victims," he told photographers, ordering military, police and disaster officials to ensure safety.

The monsoon floods had driven more than 19,000 people from their homes, according to Jakarta governor Joko Widodo.

National disaster management agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the death toll rose to three when a 35-year old man was electrocuted on Thursday. A two-year old boy was swept away and a 46-year-old man was electrocuted earlier this week.

The waters started to recede in the afternoon but floods remained in some areas including the central business district, where luxury hotels and the French, German and British embassies were surrounded.

Motorists trying to avoid the deluge drove along pavements and central reservations, or headed the wrong way down one-way streets. In some areas children punted rafts along roads which looked more like canals.

"Jakarta today is a huge swimming pool. Everyone's playing in the rain, walking in the water and laughing. The downside is, I have no idea how to get home, I might have to walk back three hours," 32-year-old administrative officer Yohanna, who uses a single name, told AFP.

Authorities raised the flood alert to its highest level early Thursday, said disaster agency spokesman Nugroho, describing the city as "besieged".

"The situation could get worse in the coming days as the rain shows little sign of abating," he told AFP.

But as rescuers rushed to evacuate residents, welfare ministry spokesman Tito Setiawan said the situation was under control.

"We have sent out trucks and rafts to move victims whose homes were inundated to temporary shelters. We will also provide food, water and humanitarian aid," he said.

Indonesia is regularly afflicted by deadly floods and landslides during its wet season, which lasts around half the year, and many in the capital live beside rivers which periodically overflow.

- AFP/fa

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AT&T eyes international expansion for growth

Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T mobility, speaking at the company's investor conference in New York City in November 2012.

(Credit:
Marguerite Reardon/CNET)

AT&T is interested in buying a European carrier for growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With the U.S. market about to get more competitive, AT&T is looking at markets in Europe where it can upgrade technology and roll out new services and pricing strategies, the Wall Street Journal said, citing unnamed sources. It reported that AT&T is studying potential acquisitions, and could strike a deal by the end of the year. In particular, AT&T is looking at the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands.

While the U.S. carriers have largely remained insular, many of the largest carriers overseas, such as Vodafone and Telefonica, have assets in multiple countries. With growth starting to slow in the U.S., it's natural for AT&T to look abroad.

But a deal isn't without risks, and the markets that AT&T is looking at are already highly competitive in their own right. These aren't fast-growing emerging markets, but fairly mature ones with several competitors already in place. Those issues, as well as the weak European markets, have led to falling valuations and potentially attractive prices for many of these companies.

AT&T, of course, isn't a stranger to doing business with a major European player. The company two years ago attempted to acquire T-Mobile USA, a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom. That deal, of course, fell apart due to regulatory scrutiny, and the company has been focusing on smaller deals since then.

It's unclear how such a deal would interfere or compliment the company's large network upgrade plans. The company is spending an additional $14 billion to upgrade its wireless and wireline networks as it looks to new sources of growth in the U.S.

But AT&T is also looking at a market that will get more competitive in the coming months. Softbank is poised to come in and inject capital into Sprint, and its leadership has already warned that it would introduce new pricing schemes to shake up the market. Deutsche Telekom has re-committed itself to T-Mobile, which is planning to merge with MetroPCS and likewise promised to introduce new competitive plans.

AT&T does currently have an international presence in the form of a business arm that provides services to multinational corporations, but it doesn't yet serve consumers.

An AT&T representative declined to comment on the report.

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6 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You

Photograph by AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

The planet keeps getting hotter, new data showed this week. Especially in America, where 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded, by far. Every few years, the U.S. federal government engages hundreds of experts to assess the impacts of climate change, now and in the future.

From agriculture (pictured) to infrastructure to how humans consume energy, the National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Committee spotlights how a warming world may bring widespread disruption.

Farmers will see declines in some crops, while others will reap increased yields.

Won't more atmospheric carbon mean longer growing seasons? Not quite. Over the next several decades, the yield of virtually every crop in California's fertile Central Valley, from corn to wheat to rice and cotton, will drop by up to 30 percent, researchers expect. (Read about "The Carbon Bathtub" in National Geographic magazine.)

Lackluster pollination, driven by declines in bees due partly to the changing climate, is one reason. Government scientists also expect the warmer climate to shorten the length of the frosting season necessary for many crops to grow in the spring.

Aside from yields, climate change will also affect food processing, storage, and transportation—industries that require an increasing amount of expensive water and energy as global demand rises—leading to higher food prices.

—Daniel Stone

Published January 16, 2013

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Notre Dame: Football Star Was 'Catfished' in Hoax

Notre Dame's athletic director and the star of its near-championship football team said the widely-reported death of the star's girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and the player said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

The university's athletic director, Jack Swarbrick, said it has been investigating the "cruel hoax" since Te'o approached officials in late December to say he believed he had been tricked.

Private investigators hired by the university subsequently monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.

"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who they said they were.

"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."

Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images

Notre Dame's Athletic Director Discusses Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax Watch Video

MTV's 'Catfish' Series Pulls Back Curtain on Online Profiles Watch Video

Te'o said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te'o's grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te'o at Notre Dame and in the media.

"While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, 'I love you,'" Te'o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death.

Now, responding to a story first reported by the sports website Deadspin, Te'o has acknowledged that Kekua never existed. The website reported today that there were no records of a woman named Lennay Kekua anywhere.

Te'o denied that he was in on the hoax.

"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said in a statement released this afternoon. "We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her."

Swarbrick said he expected Te'o to give his version of events at a public event soon, perhaps Thursday, and that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until today's story broke.

Deadspin reported that the image attached to Kekua's social media profiles, through which the pair interacted, was of another woman who has said she did not even know Te'o or know that her picture was being used. The website reported that it traced the profiles to a California man who is an acquaintance of Te'o and of the woman whose photo was stolen.

"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," Te'o said.

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NASA rover ready to drill into Martian rock

Victoria Jaggard, physical sciences news editor

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

NASA's Curiosity rover is about to tap the rocky veins of Mars, which might yield clues to the Red Planet's watery past.

Exploring a region not far from where it landed on 6 August, the Curiosity rover has found rocks shot through with veins of light-coloured minerals. Chemical analysis from one of the rover's remote-sensing cameras shows that the veins are hydrated calcium sulphates, possibly gypsum. They probably formed when water flowed through fractures in the bedrock and left dissolved material behind behind.

The find takes NASA's mantra "follow the water" to a whole new level.

"The exciting thing about precipitated minerals is that we know something dissolved rock somewhere else on the planet and ions got transported along by a fluid," said project scientist John Grotzinger during a teleconference yesterday. Studying the mineral-laced rocks can give clues to where the water came from and to environmental conditions when the veins formed.

The team will use the rover's drill for the first time on a veined outcrop named John Klein, an homage to a former project worker who died in 2011. The drill can bite about 5 centimetres into Martian rock, collect pulverised samples and deliver material to other onboard instruments for analysis.

"What we are hoping to do is get a sense of the mineralogy - how many aqueous mineral phases are present, the isotope ratios, and even a chance to look for organics," Grotzinger said.

Although initially thought too soft to preserve fossils, previous work showed that gypsum on Earth can hold traces of ancient carbon-based life.

Elsewhere at the site - a shallow depression dubbed Yellowknife Bay - the rover has spotted rocks studded with rounded features called spherules, which also tell of fluids at work.

"We are feeling confident these are sedimentary concretions [rocks formed as sediments washed from afar become cemented together]," Grotzinger said. "Put that together with the veins, and basically these rocks were saturated with water."

Another outcrop at the site shows a texture called cross-bedding, which resembles stacked layers of rock. These features on Earth are associated with water pushing small dunes of sediments along a stream bed. "There's a real trend that's emerging here on our tour," Grotzinger said.

The team won't be ready to drill for a few weeks yet, as they continue to take samples with other instruments and then drive the rover to the John Klein outcrop.

"It takes a fairly extended period of time because drilling is the most significant engineering thing we've done since landing," said rover project manager Richard Cook. Team members have also been examining and recording the great diversity of rock types at Yellowknife Bay, some of which may also become targets for drilling.

"It's safe to say scientists have been led into the candy store," Cook said. "I'm really excited about the next few weeks."

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Tennis: Djokovic dazzles in straight-sets win over Harrison

MELBOURNE: Novak Djokovic was in the zone with a dazzling demolition of Ryan Harrison as he stormed into the third round of the Australian Open on Wednesday.

The world number one was in irresistible form, outclassing the young American 6-1, 6-2, 6-3 in just one hour 31 minutes of high-class tennis on Rod Laver Arena.

Djokovic, a three-time winner and going for three straight Australian titles, will next play Czech journeyman Radek Stepanek in the last 32.

The Serb said it was one of the best matches he has played in the early rounds at a Grand Slam.

"I've played many matches in Grand Slams in my career, so it's tough to compare which one is the best I would take under the circumstances," he said.

"I tried to focus on the start and I knew that he had nothing to lose and would come out with his big serves, but I managed to make some very important early breaks at the start of the match.

"I was a set up after 20 minutes and it was a mental advantage, I felt much more comfortable on the court.

"This was definitely a better performance than the first round.

"I managed to play in a very high level already in the second round of a Grand Slam, which is very encouraging for next challenge."

Djokovic jumped out of the blocks and won 12 of the first 13 points to put the young American on the back foot and down an early service break.

He broke Harrison again in the sixth game and wrapped up the opening set in just 20 minutes.

The Serb top seed carried on where he left off breaking the American's opening service to win seven of the first eight games.

Djokovic broke Harrison's serve for a fourth time to carry on the blitz and raced to a two sets to love lead via three set points in 30 minutes.

Harrison was broken again in the opening game of the final set as Djokovic closed in on victory.

But the young American refused to give in and held three service games under pressure, to the appreciation of the centre court crowd.

Djokovic again put Harrison's service under pressure and took out the match on his second match point.

"He played really well," Harrison said. "Kind of getting broke in that first service game, giving a guy that's that good a little bit of a lead and letting him front-run is just not the ideal way to start."

- AFP/fa

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Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz 'hacking' case comes under fire

Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts

(Credit:
U.S. Department of Justice)

A politically ambitious Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case against Aaron Swartz has come under fire for alleged prosecutorial abuses that led the 26-year-old online activist to take his own life.

Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who was selected by President Obama, compared the online activist -- accused of downloading a large number of academic papers -- to a common criminal in a 2011 press release. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz said at the time. Last fall, her office slapped Swartz with 10 additional charges that carried a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.

"He was killed by the government," Swartz's father, Robert, said at his son's funeral in Highland Park, Ill., today, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times.

Last Wednesday, less than three months before the criminal trial was set to begin, Ortiz's office formally rejected a deal that would have kept Swartz out of prison. Two days later, Swartz killed himself.

"He was being made into a highly visible lesson," says Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge, Mass., attorney who first met Swartz in 2001 and spoke with him after his arrest. "He was enhancing the careers of a group of career prosecutors and a very ambitious -- politically-ambitious -- U.S. attorney who loves to have her name in lights."

Ortiz' spokeswoman did not respond to questions from CNET today. The spokeswoman, Christina Sterling, had said earlier this week: "We want to respect the privacy of the family and do not feel it is appropriate to comment on the case at this time."

Replies Silverglate, the defense attorney and author of the book "Three Felonies a Day:" "It nearly made me puke. Out of deference to the family they weren't going to respond to the charges? It wasn't 'out of deference to the family.' It was out of deference to their careers."

Swartz was accused of 13 felony counts relating to connecting a computer to MIT's network without authorization and retrieving over four million academic journal articles from the JSTOR database (he was allowed to access JSTOR, but not to perform a bulk download). The advocacy group Demand Progress, which Swartz had helped to create and which helped to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act a year ago, likened it to "trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library." (Swartz also sold a company he founded called Infogami to Reddit and was one of the co-creators of the RSS standard for syndicating content.)

If Swartz had stolen a $100 hard drive with the JSTOR articles, it would have been a misdemeanor offense that would have yielded probation or community service. But the sweeping nature of federal computer crime laws allowed Ortiz and Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, who wanted a high-profile computer crime conviction, to pursue felony charges. Heymann threatened the diminutive free culture activist with over 30 years in prison as recently as last week.

The Boston U.S. Attorney's office was looking for "some juicy looking computer crime cases and Aaron's case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill," Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney at the Keker & Van Nest law firm, told the Huffington Post. Heymann, Peters says, thought the Swartz case "was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper."

Heymann was also the Boston office's point person in a second investigation that spurred another young hacker to kill himself. In 2008, 24-year-old Jonathan James committed suicide after being named a suspect in a federal cybercrime investigation. His suicide note said: "I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public."

"The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up"

Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide two days after federal prosecutors rejected his attorney's proposal for no prison time.

(Credit:
Fred Benson/ Creative Commons: Flickr)

Ortiz has now found herself in an unusual -- and uncomfortable -- position: as the target of an investigation instead of the initiator of one.

An online petition asking President Obama to remove her from office has garnered 35,000 signatures. The threshold at the time for triggering an official White House response, which has not yet happened, was 25,000. (A separate petition asking for the removal of prosecutor Stephen Heymann has attracted only 4,000 signatures so far.)

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said he has launched an investigation into Ortiz's prosecution of Swartz. It's a bipartisan sentiment: Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and former Internet entrepreneur, told the Hill that: "The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up. It's absurd that he was made a scapegoat."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, published draft legislation today (PDF) called "Aaron's Law" that would no longer make it a crime to violate terms of service agreements.

Ortiz had been a rising star in the Democratic Party: a law-and-order Hispanic prosecutor who had won high-profile convictions including Salvatore DiMasi, the former Massachusetts House speaker. The Boston Globe named her "Bostonian of the Year" in 2011 and reported last month that Ortiz was a potential gubernatorial candidate.

Swartz's friends and family have, in the days since his death, argued that Ortiz, Heymann, and assistant U.S. attorney Scott Garland employed tactics should have been reserved for serious criminals, not an activist who merely downloaded more articles than JSTOR would have preferred. A Swartz family statement posted at RememberAaronSW.com says: "The U.S. attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims."

Larry Lessig, the Harvard law professor who spoke at Swartz's funeral today along with Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, said in a blog post that even though Swartz had no intention of profiting from any downloaded journal articles, "our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed."

Alex Stamos, who the defense had planned to call as an expert witness on computer intrusion, said: "I know a criminal hack when I see it, and Aaron's downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet is not an offense worth 35 years in jail." Law professor Tim Wu added that Ortiz's "legal authority to take down Swartz was shaky" after a federal appeals court ruling last year.

It's true that Swartz would not have faced 50 years in prison; that was, after all, the maximum sentence for his supposed felonies, not the minimum one. But Ortiz and her staff were intent on requiring that he plead guilty to multiple felonies and serve significant time behind bars.

Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society and former criminal defense attorney, elaborated on why Swartz was so reluctant to plead guilty:

There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. Felons have trouble getting jobs, aren't allowed to vote (though that right may be restored) and cannot own firearms (though Aaron wasn't the type for that, anyway). More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing... If he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.

JSTOR has said since 2011 that it had no interest in pursuing criminal charges, and added last weekend that it "regretted" having been drawn into "this sad event." MIT, which reportedly did encourage Ortiz to pursue the case, is now conducting an internal investigation.

Last Wednesday, two days before Swartz took his life, JSTOR said it was making its archives of more than 1,200 different academic journals free for the public to read.

Computer prodigy Aaron Swartz remembered

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Mars Rover Finds Intriguing New Evidence of Water

The first drill sample ever collected on Mars will come from a rockbed shot through with unexpected veins of what appears to be the mineral gypsum.

Delighted members of the Curiosity science team announced Tuesday that the rover was now in a virtual "candy store" of scientific targets—the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay, is filled with many different materials that could have been created only in the presence of water. (Related: "Mars Has 'Oceans' of Water Inside?")

Project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said during a press conference that the drill area has turned out "to be jackpot unit. Every place we drive exposes fractures and vein fills."

Mission scientists initially decided to visit the depression, a third of a mile from Curiosity's landing site, on a brief detour before heading to the large mountain at the middle of Gale Crater. But because of the richness of their recent finds, Grotzinger said it may be some months before they begin their trek to Mount Sharp.

The drilling, expected to start this month, will dig five holes about two inches (five centimeters) into bedrock the size of a throw rug and then feed the powder created to the rover's two chemistry labs for analysis.

The drill is the most complex device on the rover and is the last instrument to be used. Project Manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that operating it posed the biggest mechanical challenge since Curiosity's high-drama landing. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

A Watery Past?

That now-desiccated Mars once had a significant amount of surface water is now generally accepted, but every new discovery of when and where water was present is considered highly significant. The presence of surface water in its many possible forms—as a running stream, as a still lake, as ground water soaked into the Martian soil—all add to an increased possibility that the planet was once habitable. (Watch a video about searching for life on Mars.)

And each piece of evidence supporting the presence of water brings the Curiosity mission closer to its formal goal—which is to determine whether Mars was once capable of supporting life.

Curiosity scientists have already concluded that a briskly moving river or stream once flowed near the Gale landing site.

The discovery of the mineral-filled veins within Yellowknife Bay rock fractures adds to the picture because those minerals can be deposited only in watery, underground conditions.

The Curiosity team has also examined Yellowknife Bay for sedimentary rocks with the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).  Scientists have found sandstone with grains up to about the size of a peppercorn, including one shaped like a flower bud that appears to gleam. Other nearby rocks are siltstone, with grains finer than powdered sugar. These are quite different from the pebbles and conglomerate rocks found in the landing area, but all these rocks are evidence of a watery past. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

One of the primary reasons Curiosity scientists selected Gale crater as a landing site was because satellite images indicated that water-formed minerals were present near the base of Mount Sharp. Grotzinger said that the minerals' presence so close to the landing site, and some five miles from the mountain, is both a surprise and an opportunity.

The current site in Yellowknife Bay is so promising, Grotzinger said, that he would have been "thrilled" to find similar formations at the mission's prime destination at the base of Mount Sharp.  Now the mission can look forward to the surprises to come at the mountain base while already having struck gold.

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