NASA used an imager on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and by looking at light waves returned from seasonal dark streaks on the surface long suspected to be associated with liquid water confirmed the presence of water.
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MSN reports that NASA director of planetary science, Jim Green, says this changes the scope of what scientists once theorized, saying of the water discovery: “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past”.
The researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet using an imaging spectrometer on MRO. Scientists are confident that they were cut by flowing water at a few point in Mars’ history. NASA scientists say there are slowly-flowing rivulets of salty water on the planet.
But NASA will not be rushing out to search the newly discovered saltwater residue for life just yet.
Besides raising the possibility for extraterrestrial life on Mars, the new findings also give hope that the Red Planet has natural resources that future astronauts from Earth could mine when they get there, a goal that the US space agency aims to accomplish this century. The distance varies depending on the time of year and the orbit of the two planets.
The lines of “hydrated” salt minerals found would require water for their creation, and where there’s liquid water, there could be life, even if it’s in microbial form.
But the confirmation that water flows on Mars means much more.
NASA scientists have found compelling evidence that leads them to believe liquid water is present in Mars.
Scientists previously found that these slopes on Mars appear and grow incrementally in the downslope direction during warmer seasons when temperatures reach up to 26 degrees Celsius (83.9 Fahrenheit). The paper suggested possible origins of the water could include melting ice, an underground aquifer or water vapour from the thin Martian atmosphere.
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“We don’t know that it’s coming from the subsurface”.
