Is there life on Mars? NASA’s rover, Curiosity, has now given us the most convincing evidence that the red planet could have supported life billions of years ago.

Recently, a scientist looking at an illustration noticed the possible existence of a long time gone lake inside Gale Crater. This illustration is from when the Mars rover landed on the Red Planet in August 2012. The rover found evidence of clay formations, or “mudstone,” in the crater’s Yellowknife Bay, scientists said recently. This clay may have held the key ingredients for life billions of years ago. The $2.5 billion NASA mission set out to explore Gale Crater, which was thought to have once hosted flowing water. It means a lake must have existed in the area.

This long and narrow freshwater lake likely existed 3.7 billion years ago, suggesting that habitable environments existed on Mars at a given time.

“Quite honestly, it just looks very Earth-like,” said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

         NASA scientists announced that Mars could have supported life in the very distant past. Professor Ming and his colleagues said they also detected nitrogen, carbon, sulfur and oxygen those are all building blocks of life. NASA will continue to investigate their findings, and hope to one day answer the question we all want to know. Is there life on the red planet?