Day 38 of the MASA mission to the third planet.

It is now more than a month since Mission Control at MASA (Mars Aeronautics and Space Administration) announced that they had successfully landed an unmanned mobile probe on third planet from the sun. Last night came the exciting news that a second probe has now landed at 57.313638N, 1.982303W on the very edge of a dried up sea.
This morning MASA released the first hi-res photographs from the second probe which has already started a series of experiments looking for evidence that life once existed on this, now dry and barren, planet.
The probe had only travelled a matter of a few metres before it came across this enigmatic object lying on the sand. The on-board zapping laser was used to evaporate the surface of the object. An atomic spectral analysis of the emitted light suggests that it is made of a polymer of isoprene with a molecular weight of 100,000 to 1,000,000 which has been reacted with sulphur to introduce additional di-sulphide bonds, to produce a solid but elastic structure. Holographic photography coupled with x-ray amplified atomic absorption spectroscopy shows that the ball is pitted with many holes and indentations, all filled with dried up slobber, an organic material containing DNA. The holes are best seen with the onboard molecular zoomifier.
Our archaeologists are convinced that the ball was made by some primitive intelligence and that it was possibly used in some form of ritual feasting. The scientists aren't too sure; they never are.