Scientists have found reddish rock powder from the first hole drilled into a Martian mountain by NASA's Curiosity rover, that has yielded the mission's first confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit. The sample has been taken from a target called “Confidence Hills”, that had more haematite content than any rock or soil sample previously found during the two-year-old mission.

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The new sample has been the only partially oxidised and preserved samples of magnetite and olivine that indicated a gradient of oxidation levels. Researchers have reached the part of the Gale Crater where they had evidence of the ancient presence of water.

Another NASA Mars rover, Opportunity, had made a key discovery of hematite-rich spherules on a different part of Mars in 2004. That finding was important as evidence of a water-soaked history that produced those mineral concretions.