NASA’s Curiosity rover is one step closer in its quest to find traces of ancient life on Mars. Six papers published in Science today suggest that three to four billion years ago, a freshwater lake at Gale Crater harbored “chemolithotrophic” microbes that fed solely on rocks and minerals. When researchers heated windblown dust and powdered rock samples collected from the lakebed, they saw what they believe to be the combustion of organic carbon. But whether this organic carbon originated from ancient life or from the meteors and cosmic dust that rain down on Mars each year is still unknown. Also reported is the first-ever radiometric dating of the martian surface, which will help researchers narrow down where to drill in the future for organic matter that have remained unscathed by cosmic radiation. You can read all six papers and a related news story at the Curiosity special collections page: http://scim.ag/1breHxS