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We know that the building blocks of life on Earth developed very soon after the Earth's formation, and that flowing water is essential for life's development, so evidence that we had early, flowing water on Mars, will increase the chances that simple life may have developed at around the same time as it did on Earth. We hope that the Mars 2020 mission will be able to look more closely at these minerals, and begin to answer exactly what conditions existed when Mars was still young.