Curiosity Rover: Latest Mars Findings Remain Undisclosed But Has NASA 'Excited'; What the Media Speculates

One week after finding what they are calling a "historic" discovery, NASA scientists are remaining hushed on what the Mars rover Curiosity found on its mission on the Red Planet.

As the New York Times reports, John P. Grotzinger, the Mars mission's project scientist, told National Public Radio last week that the Curiosity rover had found something that has scientists at NASA excited.

"This data is going to be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he said.

However, since that time, few details have been forthcoming about what exactly it is that the rover--which landed on Mars in August--had discovered in the sands of Mars. That has only fueled speculation on what it could be.

"Fossils? Living microbial Martians? Maybe the carbon-based molecules known as organics, which are the building blocks of life?" the Times speculates.

"[An] intelligent, communication-capable life form?" Vanity Fair guesses.

"Jimmy Hoffa?" Fox News.com ventured, likely in jest.

"It could be all kinds of things," Peter H. Smith, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who was the principal investigator for NASA's earlier Phoenix Mars mission, told the Times. "If it's historic, I think it's organics. That would be historic in my book."

Either way, it looks like speculation is going to last until next week, when Dr. Grotzinger and other scientists involved with the rover announce their findings on Monday.

Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which operates Curiosity, told the Times the findings would be "interesting" rather than "earthshaking."

However, James Garvin, chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and a member of Curiosity's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) science team, is nonetheless intrigued.

"What John Grotzinger was saying as our very capable project scientist on MSL is exactly the case," Garvin told Space.com. "The analytical payload on MSL -in particular, SAM as a suite -has been making unprecedented measurements of solid material samples with incredible implications about Mars, but which require, as in all science, demonstration of reproducibility and adequacy of calibration/validation."