They identified tiny glass shards mixed in with the muds almost 30m below the lake bed.
By early March, the results were no longer in doubt: Curiosity had found a lake bed.
And after one particular pass along the mud on the lake bed, there was a sudden, ecstatic moment of discovery.
At the nearby El Mirage Lake dry lake bed, the solar-powered Lightning Motorcycle set a new speed record for production motorcycles.
It looked like a dry lake bed from space but none of the nearby rocks showed any sign of a watery past.
The lake bed is formed of a fine-grained mudstone, rich in clay.
As the lake bed dries, dust will be whipped into the air.
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An image from Mr. Ritts's last project is in the show, a 2002 photo of actor Ben Affleck posing in a dry lake bed in California's Mojave Desert.
This would moisten a bit of the exposed lake bed and provide an emergency stopover for the enormous flocks of geese, avocets, grebes and teal that visit the Salton Sea.
ECONOMIST: In a ��green�� state, an environmental disaster looms
The scientists said the locale was almost certainly a primordial lake bed, rich in clay minerals, where the water many eons ago wasn't too salty or alkaline for life to thrive.
Then, four days later, flying touch-and-go landings in a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star with Chuck Yeager, the wheels became stuck in a lake bed made wet by recent rain where they had to await rescue.
More than 1, 500 historic buildings dot the downtown area, and because the city was built atop a drained lake bed, some edifices , like the gravity-defying Ex-Teresa museum, a former 17th-century convent, are teetering like there is no tomorrow.
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Opportunity has been trundling around Mars ever since, though it was designed for only a ninety-day mission. (Spirit got stuck in a sand trap in 2009 and quit transmitting nearly a year later.) It never found the lake bed, or organic material of any kind.
The techniques needed to extract fossil and climatic evidence from this lake bed, and to search for life forms that have adapted to survive in such hostile conditions, would also work on Mars so it is an ideal location to test robots and even to train would-be astronauts.
It looked like windblown soil from the bed of a lake or pond the kind of place most likely to harbor life and preserve its remains.
According to Salima District Information Officer Tione Andsen, two bodies were recovered from the bed of the lake on Sunday morning and three more were recovered later.
Water hyacinth grows into a thick bed of waxy leaves and violet flowers that cover the surface of the lake.
Reign over your romantic retreat from your bed chamber's fittingly king-sized bed-or the two-person Jacuzzi tub-while taking in the sparkling waters of Seneca Lake.
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