Did I miss the big NASA/Mars secret that was supposed to come out in Dec?

[hexola]

Didn't they say before Christmas?

[leveymg]

1. Found traces of methane, a sign of organic chemicals, announced a few weeks ago.

[piratefish08]

2. sometimes NASA is just a big rock tease.

[librechik]

3. we all missed it.

whatever it was went back in the vault for a our children's children to see, maybe.

Seriously there was a delay and then they announced something NOT earthshaking, that everyone already knew about.

I wonder what they yanked back from public consumption. cuz that was definitely my impression of what happened.

[A Little Weird]

4. Overzealous reporter

From what I read about it, a reporter was talking to a guy from NASA. The researcher was very excited and enthusiastic talking about the Mars mission all the cool stuff they were learning and he said "it would be one for the history books". The reporter took that to mean that there was a big discovery that was going to come out soon. But there was never a big discovery - he was talking about the Mars mission overall being historic. But once the initial story went out, it pretty much went viral and everyone was speculating about what this big discovery could be. So in the end it was a big let down over a huge miscommunication.

I don't have the original source I read about this in, but here's a blog talking about it too:

http://www.geekwithenvy.com/2012/12/big-nasa-discovery-on-mars-not-so-much/