Soil on Mars found to be 'strikingly similar' to locations in Scotland

Curiosity is the name of a space exploration vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011. It landed on the planet Mars on August 6, 2012. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System.  The goals of Curiosity include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology and data on Martian minerals has been beamed back to Earth. The Aberdeen-based James Hutton Institute studied this data and researchers compared the information against the institute's Scottish soil dataset. They found the Martian soil to be "strikingly similar" to basaltic soils of the Scottish islands of Skye and Mull. This is not the only connection with Scotland. Nasa's Mars Curiosity space exploration vehicle is exploring a part of the planet named after Torridon in Scotland. Nasa chose the name Torridon due to the Torridonian Supergroup, a geological formation in the north west Highlands that contains some of the oldest evidence of life of any rocks in Scotland. As well as Torridon other geological areas and features have Scottish location names, such as Siccar Point, Muck, Wick, Sandwick and Holyrood on Mars.