NASA scientist, Dr. Steven W. Squyres explained at a press conference in Washington that the Opportunity painstakingly took tiny pictures of rocks, no bigger then a postage stamp, and then sent the images back down to Earth. Once on Earth, NASA scientist's took the pictures and turned them into a giant mosaic. The end result of the mosaic image was scientists announcing there was a pool of water on the surface of Mars, and the rover, Opportunity was sitting in this pool.

The scientists explained that the images of the rocks showed that the rocks were undulated, and there were no parallel-lines, which are "tell-tale signs of sediment left there being shaped by water," said Dr. Squyres.

Mike Trepal, is a sophomore at Marist College. "I think it's definitely cool that they could figure something like that out, but it seems like a waste of money to me. Especially because we have a war going on right now, didn't we already know there was water there anyway?" said Trepal.

Steve Twomey, a staff writer for the NY Times wrote; "scientists have long known there was ice on Mars and long suspected that water had flowed across it, but it was not until now…that solid evidence had emerged that the planet had a warmer, wetter past."

President Bush after the Shuttle Columbia crash, announced plans to send astronauts back to the moon, and to Mars. NASA was given an even larger budget to pay for the recent rover projects. NASA now has additional plans to send a robot in 2013 to bring back samples of rock to earth.