Mars appears to have flowing rivulets of water, at least in the summer, scientists reported Monday in a finding that boosts the odds of life on the red planet.
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“What we’re dealing with is wet soil, thin layers of wet soil, not standing water“, said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona at Tucson, the leading scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s project.
Since water is essential for life, the discovery increases the possibility of finding life on Mars, NASA said.
NASA Mars scientists who participated in a Reddit AMA said that a few forms of life on Earth also hibernate during dry seasons.
Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated mineral salts on slopes where mysterious darkish streaks, known recurring slope lineae (RSL) have been observed to ebb and flow over time, darkening in warm seasons and fading in cooler months. Scientists (and humans) have always wondered about life existing beyond earth and the hopes and means to travel there, so this announcement is nothing short of a potential breakthrough.
The next question is: from where does the water come? NASA bases its findings on data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling Mars since 2006.
Said Grunsfeld: “I think all of the scientific discoveries we’re making on the surface of Mars … these observations are giving us a much better view that Mars has resources that are useful to future travels”.
NASA researchers wrote in the journal Science that they compared the ratio of two different types of water found in the Martian atmosphere to the ratio of those waters trapped in a Martian meteorite dating back 4.5 billion years. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL. “Mars water would most likely be “briny rather than pure” not free flowing“. “Today we’re going to announce, under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars”.
How about a summer vacation on the Red Planet?
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They found telltale fingerprints of salts that form only in the presence of water in narrow channels cut into cliff walls throughout the planet’s equatorial region.
