‘Mars Mystery Solved’, Says NASA on Sunday

“When most people talk about water on Mars, they’re usually talking about ancient water or frozen water”, said Georgia Tech researcher Lujendra Ojha, the lead author of a report on these findings published September 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The key fact: it “suggests that it would be possible for there to be life today on Mars”, John Grunsfeld, Nasa’s science mission chief, said.

But the latest observations from an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter strongly support the longtime theory that salt water in liquid form flows down certain Martian slopes each summer, according to the agency’s researchers.

“This is tremendously exciting”, James L. Green, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, said during a news conference on Monday. ‘Liquid water has been found on Mars’.

NASA’s discovery of flowing water on Mars changes everything we thought we knew.

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).

David Bowie finally has an answer to his question – yes, there may be life on Mars.

As it turns out, scientists now believe that the mysterious streaks, which disappear and reappear based on the temperature, are likely the result of water being wicked up to the surface from a shallow subsurface flow.

Unfortunately for ET-hunters, on Mars “the water activity in perchlorate solutions may be too low to support known terrestrial life”, NASA added.

Scientists say a satellite that’s been orbiting the planet found clear evidence of salty water underneath the surface. 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. “What we are going to announce today is that Mars is not that dry, arid planet we thought of in the past”.

Scientists are still unsure of the water’s source, but noted that it could be from underground aquifers, melting ice, vapor from the atmosphere, or a few combination of these sources.