Mars Rover Discovers Evidence of Water

NASA scientists announced yesterday that the Spirit rover has uncovered strong evidence of water on Mars. Less clear-cut evidence of water had been unearthed earlier this year by the Opportunity rover on the other side of the planet. Dr. Steven W. Squyres, the mission's principal investigator, said that what Spirit has just discovered is "much more compelling evidence than we have found anywhere else."

"The rover found polymers of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in a trench it had dug in the Gusev Crater," Squyres said. "The concentrations discovered suggest the minerals were once combined as polyethylene," the scientific name for a popular consumer plastic. "We were excited about the ancient presence of polyethylene, so we kept digging deeper," he said. "Sure enough, at a depth of about 70 meters we found something a bit unexpected, an empty bottle of Evian Spring Water." At first, the scientists were puzzled by the discovery because "everybody knows Evian comes from the French Alps, not from Mars," said Squyres. They eventually came up with the theory that the original creators of Evian were Martian natives who came to France thousands of years ago after depleting the Martian water supply, which proves, said Squyres, that "the French really are all aliens from Mars."