Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science at NASA said during a press conference on Monday that “under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars”. We have to wait for more tests and experiments. “If they keep examining things on the planet I think they will find a few sort of life was possibly there or is possibly there, whether it’s microbes or algae”. The salty water then flows downhill on the planet’s sloping geological features and leaves a darkish mark on the surface.
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According to NASA, the water found on Mars is brine, saturated with different salts such as perchlorates.
“We’ve known about these streaks for … several years and most of us suspected from the beginning that they were probably made with briny water, said Sean McMahon of Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics”.
“For the first time, we have orbital evidence of the agent that has enabled water to flow under on the surface of today’s Mars“, said Michael Meyers, Lead Scientist of the Mars Exploration Program.
The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Ojha continues, “even if RSL are slightly underground, where it’s even colder than the surface temperature, the salts would keep the water in a liquid form and allow it to creep down Martian slopes”.
“Studying how life would evolve on a completely alien world tells us more about how life came about here”, said Miller.
The latest news of finding water comes after the instruments of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter gave the strongest evidence for the same.
The discovery of liquid water on Mars could be a game-changer in NASA’s goal of sending a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s.
Scientists in 2008 confirmed the existence of frozen water on Mars.
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THE chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but the search for martian life has just been boosted with the discovery of a precious, life giving resource – water.
