The strange “glow” spotted on the Red Planet by Curiosity is not a sign of life. It is either a shiny rock or a glitch in the rover’s camera, NASA has said.UFO blogger Scott Waring had claimed that the new photograph taken by the rover suggests there are intelligent creatures living underground.

However, NASA said it has now investigated the image, and found it is simply a trick of light.

“One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun,” a NASA spokesperson was quoted as saying by mailonline.uk.

“When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.

“The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be caused by cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector.”

NASA’s engineers believe the glow may have been caused by sunlight reaching the camera’s sensors through a vent hole in the camera housing.

The agency said this has happened previously on other cameras on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned.

NASA also revealed that such glitches are commonplace.

“Among the thousands of images received from Curiosity, ones with bright spots show up nearly every week.”

Curiosity takes images using two cameras, one in its right eye and the other in its left.

While the image from the right eye shows this bright spot, the same image from the left eye does not.

WASHINGTON: The next robotic rover to explore Mars in 2020 should scour the surface of the red planet more closely than ever for signs of past life, a Nasa science team said Tuesday. 

The US space agency's science definition team (SDT) released a 154-page document containing its proposals for the next Mars rover, after five months of work. 

The mission would use microscopic analysis for the first time, collect the first rock samples for possible return to Earth and test ways to use natural resources on site for a future human trip, it said. 

The Mars 2020 mission would build on the work being done by Nasa's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the red planet since August 2012 and has already found evidence of potentially habitable environments. 

The mission would present "a major step toward seeking signs of life," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at Nasaheadquarters. 

The next step is for Nasa to analyze the recommendations and issue a call for scientific instruments, which could include higher resolution imaging devices, microscopes, fine scale minerology, chemistry and organic carbon detection tools to scan for biosignatures on the surface of Mars. 

"To combine this suite of instruments would be incredibly powerful," said Jack Mustard, SDT chair and professor of geological sciences at Brown University. 

The rover would collect about 31 samples that might someday be returned to Earth, representing "a legacy for understanding the development of habitability on the planet," he told reporters. 

The US space agency has not yet devised the technology to bring the cache back to Earth without disturbing its contents, and no plans have been set for any potential sample-return. 

The next Nasa mission to Mars is a November launch of MAVEN, an orbiter that will study how Mars interacted with the solar wind and lost its atmosphere. 

The European Space Agency will follow in 2018 with its ExoMars rover. 

John Grunsfeld, Nasa's associate administrator for science, said the 2020 Mars rover would get the US space agency to the next step in the "quest to answer the grand questions," before a planned human mission in the 2030s. 

"Do we see any evidence of past life in those habitable environments?" he said, alluding to the aims of the future missions.