almost like having a geologist there. bill: i want to stress and it's important to stress could is the operative word here. could have supported life. that's not a definitive right. >> that is absolutely correct. what nasa is doing is looking to see if the environment on mars at one time would have been conducive, or would have been possible to support life. it's not looking for life, this is not evidence of life, it's just looking at the building blocks that we've now found there. bill: and we are finding also that mars may have been a lot more earth-like some years ago as well. >> yeah. bill: what is next for the rover, what is the next step in this process? >> well you could say in a way that a lot of the primary mission here -- some of the primary mission has been accomplished of being able to identify the environment. the next thing to do is to start looking for more complex chemical compound, hopefully finding some more organic compound that would indicate the possibility of further development toward the amino acid part of the building blocks