The Mars rover Curiosity has had a major breakthrough: It has found water after scraping the dusty surface of the red planet.
The fine-grained soil has revealed a water content of about 2 per cent – a level which could be useful for future human missions.
The water is not free-flowing, but is bound to other molecules contained in the dirt.
The Curiosity rover has been scouring the surface of mars since August 2012.
NASA scientists formally published a series of papers last night detailing the results of experiments carried out by the robot’s various scientific instruments.
“We tend to think of Mars as this dry place to find water fairly easy to get out of the soil at the surface was exciting to me,” said Laurie Leshin, lead author of the Science paper which confirmed the presence of water.
“If you took about a cubic foot of the dirt and heated it up, you’d get a couple of pints of water out of that a couple of water bottles’ worth that you would take to the gym.”
Curiosity found the water after scooping up samples of Martian dirt and dropping it into sample trays before inserting them into an “oven” built into its belly.
“We heat [the soil] up to 835C and drive off all the volatiles and measure them,” Leshin said. “We have a very sensitive way to sniff those and we can detect the water and other things that are released.”
The experiment also revealed sulpher dioxide, carbon dioxide and oxygen.
This article originally appeared on News.com.au.