This image shows some of the soils of Mars from the Viking 2 landing site, Utopia Planitia.
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The first analysis of Mars' soil from Viking landers found no evidence of life, instead showing that organic molecules are even more scarce than on the Earth's moon. The Viking missions did confirm the presence of water in the soils and atmosphere, in both solid and vapor form. The soils found near the rocks explored by Mars Pathfinder's Rover were similar to those found by Viking I (check the large topographic map of Mars for the distances between these two landing sites), even though the rocks were not. At the Viking landing site the rocks were commonly coated with a bright red dust, while at Ares Vallis, these rocks were rare. Instead the rocks seemed to be mostly dark gray in color. This suggests that soils of Mars may be the same throughout the globe, perhaps carried all over Mars by global dust storms.
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