More than 20 years after NASA’s Spirit rover landed on Mars, ECU Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Paulo de Souza, who worked on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission, has identified previously undetected mineral clues in the rover’s data. “The original rover observations were limited by time, power and the gradual ageing of the instrument used to collect the data,” Professor de Souza said. “One of the most important discoveries was finding crystalline hematite in ordinary Martian soil,” he said. NASA’s Spirit rover launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in June 2003 and landed on Mars in January 2004. Camera Icon NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit two years into the mission.