The possibility of life on Mars just became a little more realistic: Mars has a summer season when salty streams of water flow across the surface, before freezing again in winter, NASA announced on Monday, indicating the red planet could currently have life on its surface.
“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”
Eons ago, ancient Mars had “an extensive atmosphere,” along with “an ocean two-thirds the size of the northern hemisphere and a mile deep,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA said during a press conference on Monday. After an unknown catastrophe, “Mars suffered a major climate change and lost its surface water,” Green explained.
Scientists confirmed in 2008 that frozen water exists on Mars. New data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite indicate that some liquid water has survived as well — leaving a chance that some form of Martian life has, too. Traces of hydrated salts and slopes resembling erosion on Martian hills indicate that salty, perchlorate water flows along the surface in warmer seasons. Mars has a more eccentric solar orbit than Earth, which means that water could exist on the surface during the hotter summers when it is closer to the Sun, then possibly freezes and disappears during the colder seasons, according to the research.
“Mars is not the dry arid planet that we thought of in the past,” Green said.
This discovery of warm seasons with surface water on Mars makes it look more habitable for humans explorers, and perhaps one day colonists, said Mary Beth Wilhelm, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center during the call. Pure water would be highly unstable in the harsh Mars atmosphere, which is why salty water likely survives freezing or boiling during the rotation between the extreme hot and cold seasons, according to the research.
Water has been discovered on Mars before, including at its poles, but NASA is unsure where water on the surface may come from. Wilhelm said she is optimistic this new data gives scientists “a great opportunity to be in the right places” to find deposits of water that humans could use — or even life that survives on the traces of salts, liquid and traces of humidity in Mars’ atmosphere.
“Water on the planet may be an important future resource for human explorers on Mars,” she said.
NASA and other space agencies are already brainstorming how to get enough water to Mars to support human exploration. It costs $10,000 per pound to send any supplies into space because of the fuel costs, so water in space would save boatloads of cash.
The European Space Agency and NASA are both searching for water on asteroids with the hope that water could one day be mined from their crust and taken to the Moon or Mars. Even though asteroid mining is years away from feasibility companies Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources have staked their claim as two of the first businesses interested in space prospecting.
President Barack Obama has called on NASA to send humans to orbit Mars by the 2030s, and to aim for a Mars landing afterward. A round-trip mission to the red planet could take at least three years, so retired astronaut Mark Kelly told U.S. News in a previous story that extensive research should be done before sending humans to the red planet. NASA scientists echoed that tone during the call on Monday, touting discoveries from the Mars satellite as an important step toward a human expedition.
This discover of water also makes the search for extraterrestrial life into a more serious undertaking, Grunsfeld said. Indeed, NASA has speculated that planned missions to survey asteroids near Mars could unveil the survival of microscopic life — so why not on a planet that once had an ocean and an atmosphere?
“The existence of liquid water gives the possibility that if there is life on Mars we have a way to describe how it might survive,” he said. “That question [of whether there is alien life] is not an abstract scientific question. It is a concrete question that we can answer.”
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NASA: Water Means Life on Mars Is Possible originally appeared on usnews.com