NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars


NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.

"These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington.

Liquid water, as opposed to the water ice and water vapor known to exist at Mars, is considered necessary for life. The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars. The Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor provided the new evidence of the deposits in images taken in 2004 and 2005.

"The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," said Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "They have finger-like branches at the downhill end and easily diverted around small obstacles." Malin is principal investigator for the camera and lead author of a report about the findings published in the journal Science.

The atmosphere of Mars is so thin and the temperature so cold that liquid water cannot persist at the surface. It would rapidly evaporate or freeze. Researchers propose that water could remain liquid long enough, after breaking out from an underground source, to carry debris downslope before totally freezing. The two fresh deposits are each several hundred meters or yards long.

The light tone of the deposits could be from surface frost continuously replenished by ice within the body of the deposit. Another possibility is a salty crust, which would be a sign of water's effects in concentrating the salts. If the deposits had resulted from dry dust slipping down the slope, they would likely be dark, based on the dark tones of dust freshly disturbed by rover tracks, dust devils and fresh craters on Mars.

Mars Global Surveyor has discovered tens of thousands of gullies on slopes inside craters and other depressions on Mars. Most gullies are at latitudes of 30 degrees or higher. Malin and his team first reported the discovery of the gullies in 2000. To look for changes that might indicate present-day flow of water, his camera team repeatedly imaged hundreds of the sites. One pair of images showed a gully that appeared after mid-2002. That site was on a sand dune, and the gully-cutting process was interpreted as a dry flow of sand.

Today's announcement is the first to reveal newly deposited material apparently carried by fluids after earlier imaging of the same gullies. The two sites are inside craters in the Terra Sirenum and the Centauri Montes regions of southern Mars.

"These fresh deposits suggest that at some places and times on present-day Mars, liquid water is emerging from beneath the ground and briefly flowing down the slopes. This possibility raises questions about how the water would stay melted below ground, how widespread it might be, and whether there's a below-ground wet habitat conducive to life. Future missions may provide the answers," said Malin.

Besides looking for changes in gullies, the orbiter's camera team assessed the rate at which new impact craters appear. The camera photographed approximately 98 percent of Mars in 1999 and approximately 30 percent of the planet was photographed again in 2006. The newer images show 20 fresh impact craters, ranging in diameter from 7 feet (2 meters) to 486 feet (148 meters) that were not present approximately seven years earlier. These results have important implications for determining the ages of features on the surface of Mars. These results also approximately match predictions and imply that Martian terrain with few craters is truly young.

Mars Global Surveyor began orbiting Mars in 1997. The spacecraft is responsible for many important discoveries. NASA has not heard from the spacecraft since early November. Attempts to contact it continue. Its unprecedented longevity has allowed monitoring Mars for over several years past its projected lifetime.

The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars.

I agree. it makes us easier to plan.

Reading this articles gives me ideas for the future mars colonization. I want to built robots.

Thanks for letting me know through pm. This is quite amazing.

But, i dont think the water is healthy or the same as Earth water ... due to the atomosphere.

We dont know for sure, if we can make helpful uses of the water type.

thats awesome but is terraforming mars a good idea? sure it has water but can we really use it to live on? cause thats what everybody wants to do when we find more evidence of water on mars.

Lol, time to move to Mars.

Great, another planet that us humans can pollute and overpopulate.

Haha, that's what I was thinking. I mean we f--ked up Earth? That doesn't mean that we should move to another planet. We'll probably end up destorying that one too. But not all of Earth is gross and stuff. I mean we have Fresh clean air where I live

^ Well, the article says There's probably microbial life under the surface of Mars, but I doubt that there's any life at all on the surface. And I highly doubt the existence of intelligent life forms on Mars. But there's this theory that Mars was exactly like Earth back in it's earlier days, and of course, harbored intelligent life. I really believe that that theory is true because some craters on Mars show some polarity, meaning that it probably had a strong magnetic field, like Earth. And now more evidence to prove that there's water on Mars makes me believe in that theory even more.


Care to share some of your ideas?

I want to build robots too! More specifically, rovers like Opportunity and Spirit, which is why I want to work at NASA's JPL.
Robots would definitely be useful for the extraction of water! Transportation too.

And yeah, the water there is definitely not the same as the water on Earth. It's probably a lot more acidic because of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
You probably can't grow anything with it (and it's probably not drinkable), but we could always build a filter for the water. Or add something to make it more basic.

Actually, fcking up the Earth doesn't necessarily make it gross and stuff. Global warming doesn't make the Earth gross and yet, it greatly harms us.

I'm thinking that by the time people move to Mars, there'll be cleaner, more efficient fuels, so we won't 'eff up that planet.
But.. Not many people are going to move to Mars anyways because most of the people who move there will most likely be studying the geography of Mars and trying to find how life formed on Earth, so we don't have to really worry about that.

Haha. We have the same idea.

You know what negative things I'm thinking of?
Colonization is almost like American 13 colonies.
What if Mars-lings decided to break away from Earthlings in the future?
Politics/Economic gets in a way.

Indeed. Nuclear beam. Nuclear Planet Shield. Haha.

If U.S was first to colonize Mars and transport materials back to Earth, other countries would do anything to colonize by attacking U.S.A, hijacking NASA, JPL, and every science program. ;[

I don't know.

I want to live long enough to see many things involved with Mars.
And, see if Mars's environment can affects our DNA or ... if we find these awesome fossils

Then, maybe clone them. ;]