Water found on Mars

“Today we’re revolutionizing our understanding of this planet”, said Jim Green, NASA director of planetary science.

Scientists claim the flow is shallow, but containts enough water to explain the darkening on the slopes.

Scientists say the moving salty water is the cause for seasonal dark streaks they had observed on the planet, and its presence could impact future exploration. Spectral data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars instrument (CRISM) of the MRO provided evidence for 3 hydrated salts, namely magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. “We now have, I think, great opportunities in the right locations on Mars to thoroughly investigate that”.

The findings, which are described in the journal Nature Geoscience, offer an explanation for peculiar, long streaks that sometimes appear on sloping Martian terrain. “Today we’re going to announce, under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars“. Scientists have been looking for evidence of water on Mars for many years.

So far it appears that the most likely origin is that water contained in Mars’s thin atmosphere is effectively condensing and running down the planet’s polar peaks.

AFP/Getty Images The dark, narrow streaks flowing downhill could be flowing water, scientists said.

These images come from observations of Newton crater released in 2011, shows warm-season features that might be seen as evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars.

“The existence of liquid water gives the possibility that, if there is life on Mars, we have a way to describe how it might survive”, he said. It makes sense because salts lower the freezing point of water.

“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”.

“When most people talk about water on Mars, they’re usually talking about ancient water or frozen water”.