After months of travelling, Curiosity Rover has arrived at Mount Sharp, a Martian mountain that NASA hopes will provide evidence that microbial life once existed on the Red Planet.

The rover is now in the Murray Formation, an area littered with greenish silicon-rich rocks located at the base of the mountain which it will be taking drill samples from.

Silicon is known for its higher-than-average ability to preserve organic matter, which, if found will confirm that life once existed on Mars.

“Silicon is an element that we know based on Earth experience can be associated with preferential preservation of organic matter,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist from California Institute of Technology, in a NASA teleconference.

The area carries significant hallmarks of once having water, a key sign in the search for life.

“We see lots of interesting features there that suggest strongly that these rocks were formed in the presence of water,” explained Grotzinger.

The Murray Formation is of particular interest because it is 200m thick and continues underneath Mount Sharp. This is a significant increase from other previously drilled Martian rock formations, which have only been 5m thick.

The increased thickness represents millions of years of rock deposits, potentially making it a rich source of information about the Red Planet’s history.

“We potentially have millions to tens of millions of years of Martian history just waiting for us to explore,” Kathryn Stack, Curiosity Rover mission scientist of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

With help from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the aim has been to identify areas that could have sustained life to help zone-in the search for organic matter.

“In our particular case what we are trying to do is discover habitable environments,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.

The Curiosity Rover mission has been wildly successful thus far, with the initial aim of proving Mars once had the conditions to sustain life already fulfilled.

“In August 2012 curiosity landed in Gale Crater and it immediately hit the jackpot,” explained Green, referring to the fact that the crater is an ancient lakebed environment.

This location was a “go-to” site, intended as an initial area for exploration before redirecting Curiosity to Mount Sharp, its primary target, which it will eventually scale.

“It’s really an honour and privileged for me to tell you all that we have finally arrived,” said Grotzinger.

The base of the mountain has provided new and promising geology, giving the team high hopes for the rest of the mission.

“This high silica content is something different for us, it’s something new,” said Grotzinger.

“We believe we are going to be talking about a science story in the next few months that involves water.”

Images courtesy of NASA.