Washington, DC - NASA scientists say the first Mars rover, which had been providing detailed information on the Red Planet, was discovered roaming the desert terrain in the Tucson Arizona. The glum discovery came only days after scientists said to have found hard evidence of water on the planet, which had actually been an old Poland Spring bottle.

The golf-cart sized rover, which was discovered just North of the Tucson border by a vacationing couple, was at the time on a joyride by a couple of seniors from the nearby high school.

Ed Weiler, associate administrator for space science and other NASA officials made the announcement at the headquarters in Washington, after several days of ducking reporters in the hallways.

"We have concluded that the hundreds of photos of rocks we have been providing were only images of our own stupid country," said a red-faced Weiler.

"Obviously this has answered many peculiarities that had arisen during the exploration, such as the fossil discovery in January. Oh yeah, the Kitty Lounge brothel that appeared on the radar kind of had our heads scratching."

Since NASA's discovery, concern for $410 million rover had drastically increased, with reports that the solar panels and lithium-ion battery system as well as the tires had already been stripped by locals.

President Bush, who has been spearheading the mission, still hopes to gain valuable information from the rover's data.

"Although our direction has changed in our discovery, I hope we can still learn about this alien planet we now call Too-Son. As you can see the planet is even more advanced than we could have expected, and I believe……Dick get away I'm trying to speak here….Ow! Get off me!"

Despite the setback, NASA's Joy Crisp, project scientist of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory hopes to have a new launch set for summer of 2007.

"There is so much more that we can learn from our neighboring planet and we refuse to let a minor setback such as this set … um…us back," said Crisp.

"We understand that mistakes were made, but we are still determined to find evidence of past life on Mars. We won't let a small oversight like spending $5 Billion Dollars and landing on the wrong planet slow down future progress."