The Mars rover Curiosity has marked 1,000 Martian days of gathering information from the fourth planet from the sun and one Maritime university has played a key role in dissecting the data the rover is sending back.

Since August 2012, Curiosity has been roaming the surface of Mars, examining the dust, soil, and rock making up that planet.

“Just not quite touching it, but being very close to the surface, it irradiates the material, whatever it is underneath, with high energy particles,” says John Spray, of the UNB Planetary Space Science Centre. “It excites the target and that tells the instrument basically what it’s made of, so it gives you the elements of the periodic table.”

The device was developed in Canada at the Univesity of Guelph.

The satellite beams the information back to earth and back to the UNB Planetary Space Science Centre.

“Then, we as planetary geologists decipher the data and try to decipher it and try to interpret it in terms of the geological context and meaning,” says Spray.

The University of New Brunswick was chosen to be part of this mission because of its expertise on impact cratering – Mars is covered in craters.

The goal of the mission as a whole was to determine, once and for all, if there was, or is, life on Mars.

“So far we don't have definitive proof of that, but the mission is to try to explore and understand if Mars ever had environments that could’ve allowed life to form. The answer to that is yes. So the next stage is trying to find it,” says Spray.

Tuesday, Ottawa confirmed its commitment to be there for that next stage.

“That Canada will be a full partner in the International Space Station through 2024, and as result, Canada will send two more astronauts into space,” says Industry Minister James Moore.

The federal government is also promising to continue its participation in the Mars rover Curiousity mission for another two years.

“It's mechanically sound and as long as it continues to function, then the science team and engineers can keep extracting information from it,” says Spray.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Nick Moore