SPACE.com has learned that NASA hasdiscovered evidence of water on the Red Planets surface. The finding, made bythe Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, fuels hopes that there may be life onMars.
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Sources close to theagencys Mars program said the discovery involves evidence of seasonal depositsthat could be associated with springs on the planets surface.
NASA plans to make theblockbuster announcement during a press conference scheduled for June 29,sources said.
The discovery, ifconfirmed, would mark the achievement of a primary goal in NASAs program toexplore Mars.
NASAs ambitious plans forMars focus on gaining an understanding of the potential for either past orpresent life on the planet. The program also aims to improve sciencesunderstanding of Mars climate and its resources.
Key to all three themes iswater: Where and when it may have flowed in the past, where it might lurk todayand in which forms and what quantities.
NASA scientists on the MarsGlobal Surveyor team declined to comment, pending the press conference andsubsequent publication in the journal Science of a paper on thediscovery.
Ed Weiler, NASA associateadministrator for space science, told the National Academy of Sciences SpaceStudies Board on June 14 that the Mars program needs a clear-cut vision. Thereal reason to go is to find out if life is there or not, he said.
"To meet thatlong-term mission requires that you follow the water. Without water there is notlifethere was not life," Weiler said. "By following the water, itall fits together. So for the first time, we have a really good, clear,long-term vision for Mars."
Water most likely flowed inthe distant past on Mars, carving channels and other features clearly visibleon its surface. But other than in the form of clouds and ice, liquid watercannot exist on the planets surface today, thanks to the thinness of itsatmosphere.
Scientists havehypothesized that vast stores of water could still persist beneath the surfaceof Mars.
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| NASA has suggested that certain martian features, as seen in this 1997 image, may indicate fluid seepage. |
In a 1997 Mars GlobalSurveyor image, shown above, scientists proposed that water could have seepedfrom the walls of this unnamed crater in the planets southern hemisphere, andperhaps even pooled at the bottom of the impact basin.
At the time NASA originallyreleased the image, it urged caution about adopting any one hypothesisexplaining its details. Although the labeled version shown here listswater-related sources for the craters features, NASA stressed they could alsobe explained by the flow of lava.
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| Although the features could be explained by the presence of water, as in this labeled image, they could be volcanic in origin. |
Finding water on Mars willlikely put spurs into future mission planning: The American space agency willin upcoming weeks announce whether it will send an orbiter or lander spacecraftto Mars in 2003. (In 2001, it plans to send only an orbiter to the planet.)
"It's not like peopledont suspect there's water on Mars. We certainly know there was probably waterin the past in fairly good quantities with all these older features," saidJack Farmer, an astrobiologist in the Department of Geology at Arizona StateUniversity, Tempe.
"But actually findinga place where water might make it to the surface, or at least some expressionof it such as gases emitted into the atmospherethat would be a big deal,"he added.
The finding of upwellingwater could mean striking biological pay dirt, Farmer said.
"In that situation,where you have water coming up from depth, into the surface, you might bereplenishing the ground ice there on a fairly regular basis. Even if you nevergot liquid water to the surface you might be able to sequester organicmaterials, prebiotic chemistry or life, whatever, in the ground ice inventory,which you could access then by shallow drilling," Farmer said.
By finding liquid waternear the surface, or actually part of the surface environment, "you couldreally move the whole question of searching for life ahead significantly, Ithink," Farmer said. "You could do some sort of shallow drillingprogram in a robotic sense, well in advance of any human missions," hesaid.
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