Here is a recent science list serve post about recent photos from Mars along with the link to the related full article.
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Mars rover spots formations resembling flower, snake
The Mars Curiosity rover has sent back images of what appear to be a flower-like shape embedded in a rock and a snake-shaped rock stretching across the Red Planet, causing a stir among NASA officials and space enthusiasts alike. Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the flower-like object “appears to be part of the rock, not debris from the spacecraft.” Space.com (1/5)
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http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eemXCjrxogCfpMtvCidmrhCicNLJJS?format=standard
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A WindowView Perspective:

Let’s think beyond the post and think about the bigger picture on scientific exploration and what some humans, scientists included, are thinking.

Early on photos from Mars gave an impression of pyramidal shapes and even a face like mount, small mountain, or rock formation. Was the face an image from an ancient Mars based civilization. Some would like to think so. The best approach is to look for the basics and evidence for all conditions even those that might support life. As NASA missions have become more sophisticated, the examination of the planet becomes more fundamental and less sensational in it’s orientation. Evidence for water on the planet would be the more reasonable start to understanding the potential for life on Mars. But water alone does not make life.

There are intriguing questions we can ask:

1) If we find that conditions on Mars were previously favorable to the survival of life forms, does that necessarily imply life was there?
2) If we found, in future missions, evidence of microbial life, what conclusions are we to make of the evidence? ( Keep in mind microbial life from earth ejecta could have reach Mars and thus provide an explanation.)
3) Regardless of missions to date, when will NASA be able to create surface cores and retrieve the cores for closer examination?
4) At what point do we stop ourselves in interpretation based only on what the data do provide?

The first question can also be applied to planet Earth. After all, many conclusions are drawn from the presence of life, but the ability to describe how even the most primitive life forms might have an origin by material means is elusive at best. The arguments over evolution—as an explanation for the origin of life—are often bypassed with the foregone conclusion that it just happened. That’s assumption. Selection and change in existing organisms is an observable phenomenon, also associated with the term evolution, and that is not assumption.

If evidence from conditions on Mars suggests life, then that is only a first step in defining what the data really say—including about origins to life. After all, we are still facing that dilemma here on Earth in the midst of teaming life forms. And the more we study extinct or extant forms on Earth, from microbe to vertebrate, the more complexity we find … and assumptions are it just happens. Science journals are filled with complex examples for life and life systems, but we educate ourselves from a material perspective, thus we say it had to have happened from material means alone … and this includes by chance, by trial and error, and transitions for which there is limited or no evidence.

Looking deeper into Mars surface will be necessary and more telling than the recent spectacular surface missions. Hey, it’s all exciting stuff. What a marvel to even see the Red Plant close up.

But the real question goes back to a material perspective. Just watch scientists default to material explanations, even when these fall short. Finding evidence for past or present life any where else in the solar system, or beyond, stands to be the materialist’s opportunity to invalidate the Bible by science. But not finding evidence for life any where else doesn’t validate the Bible or pose a negative reflection on science. The Bible is another unique data set of another type. Yet, trying to disprove God is not a new invention. Holding fast to a material framework as if science has all the answers is also not a new invention.

The real complete picture of what conditions are on Mars will take more than the photos we have thus far. Upon reflection, the science post refers to a flower and snake shapes, but neither is this flower nor snake. The references however go to the underlying possibility or desire that science explains all, when in fact both scientific and theological perspectives together yield a complete and larger picture of our existence. This is the overall WindowView approach … not closing off, but opening the full view. This allows the evidence from science and scripture to give a unified and harmonious picture wherein life is with purpose and meaning and not by chance and meaningless.

Give it some thought … after all it’s you who looks through the window!

Director, WindowView.org