Science Quote by Steven Squyres

There is a quiet swagger in the way Squyres delivers this line: not triumphal, not poetic, just bluntly astonished. The power sits in the collective "we" and the bodily immediacy of "opened our eyes" - a phrase that sounds like waking up from a dream, even though it belongs to an enterprise defined by spreadsheets, sensors, and risk reviews. That contrast is the point. Mars exploration is usually mediated through instruments and processed images, yet he frames the moment as direct human perception, collapsing the distance between a robot rover and the people interpreting its data.

"Bedrock" does the heavy lifting. In geology, bedrock isn't just "rock"; it's origin, baseline, the unedited record beneath the dust and debris. Exposed bedrock in a crater wall signals forced revelation: an impact has torn through surface veneers to show the planet's deeper story. Squyres is implicitly saying the mission got lucky in the way science fantasizes about - nature did the excavation for them. The crater becomes a readymade cross-section, a textbook diagram turned real.

The subtext is also about legitimacy. Early Mars missions were haunted by the fear of ambiguity: pretty photos, thin conclusions. Bedrock is evidence you can argue with, sample, and map. In one sentence, Squyres marks the shift from sightseeing to fieldwork, from "we're on Mars" to "Mars is giving up its secrets."