NASA Confirms Water Could Be Flowing On Mars Now

The biggest scientific news is not the photo galleries of the Super Blood Moon from last night, but rather about the next celestial object in the sky. Mars, our sister planet and goal for the next human exploration could help support that cause with flowing water.  There is proof of ice locked up in the polar region, but now there is good reason to believe that water in liquid form could be naturally present. That has multiple implications. Back in 2010, University of Arizona undergraduate student Lujendra Ojha studied numerous photos from The Mars Explorer Satellite run by The University of Arizona. Ojha noticed dark streaks in late spring that changed color and then disappeared in fall. These seemed to flow down from a mountain.

It was that simple observation that changed the entire outlook of the once thought dry planet. NASA is stopping just short of confirming water is flowing, but they are pretty certain. They just want to literally find it and prove it before going further.

Due to atmospheric pressure about 100 times less dense than that of Earth, water could boil at just a few degrees above 0C. But a certain type of salt present would allow the water to remain liquid at higher temperatures. It would be more salty than our oceans. Should there be water on Mars, it could be tapped and purified for human use. That would sustain a human mission and feed into many science fiction movies base premise. Robinson Crusoe on Mars,  Total Recall, John Carter (Disney’s flop I actually liked), and even The Martian starring Matt Damon. But there is one other critical possibility.  NASA has stood by the principal that to find life on other planets, we must follow the water.  In fact they suggest that when our solar system was in its infancy, Mars was more habitable than Earth. Some theories continue that life started there and came to Earth. Maybe not by alien ships, but large meteor collisions.

More Photos

From High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE