Water flows on Mars, raising possibility that planet could support life – scientists

Briny water flows during the summer months on Mars, raising the possibility that the planet long thought to be arid could support life today, scientists analyzing data from a NASA spacecraft said on Monday.

Although the source and the chemistry of the water is unknown, the discovery will change scientists’ thinking about whether the planet that is most like Earth in the solar system hosts microbial life beneath its radiation-blasted crust, according to Reuters.

“It suggests that it would be possible for life to be on Mars today,” John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science, told reporters, discussing the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars,” said Jim Green, the agency’s director of planetary science.

But NASA will not be rushing out to search the newly discovered saltwater residue for life just yet.

The discovery of the water flows was made when scientists developed a new technique to analyze chemical maps of the surface of Mars obtained by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

The evidence that there was water on the planet as recently as last summer and during several previous seasons was the key finding in the study released on Monday. NASA’s ongoing Mars rover Curiosity has already found evidence that Mars had all the ingredients and suitable habitats for microbial life to exist at some point in its past.

Scientists have been trying to figure out how Mars transformed from a warm, wet and likely Earth-like planet early in its history into the cold, dry desert that exists today.

Billions of years ago, Mars, which lacks a protective, global magnetic field, lost much of its atmosphere. Several initiatives are underway to determine how much of the planet’s water was stripped away and how much remains locked in ice in underground reservoirs.

H.Z