NASA finds evidence of recent flowing water on Mars

[DocM]

Recent paper,

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2015/EPSC2015-786-1.pdf

2009 Phoenix lander findings,

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_Salty_Tears_Of_Phoenix_Show_Liquid_Water_On_Mars_999.html

New findings,

USA Today....

 

NASA finds evidence of recent flowing water on Mars

Until now, “we thought of the current Mars as a barren, extremely dry and cold desert,”SETI Institute planetary scientist Janice Bishop, who did not take part in the research, said via email. “What is new and exciting here is that this provides evidence for liquid water on Mars in the current environment.”

Eons ago, Mars had enough water to fill enormous lakes and rivers. Scientists prospecting for the wet stuff in recent decades, however, had to content themselves with ice at the planet’s poles, small amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere and water locked up in minerals in the Martian soil. The wet Mars of billions of years ago seemed to have become a desiccated world.

But five years ago, researchers spotted mysterious dark streaks running down the warm slopes of Martian craters and mountains. The lines disappeared in the cold season and reappeared in the warm season, like spring freshets on Earth. They looked tantalizingly like a sign of liquid water, but landslides or dust couldn’t be ruled out, study co-author Scott Murchie of the Applied Physics Laboratory said.
o Murchie and his colleagues had NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter take a closer look. Along the mysterious lines, the spacecraft detected the signature of waterlogged molecules of perchlorate, chemicals made up of chlorine and oxygen, the scientists report in this week’s Nature Geoscience. Something is moistening Mar’s ample deposits of perchlorate, study leader Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at theGeorgia Institute of Technology, said. And that something must be liquid water.

Maybe the perchlorate itself is pulling water vapor out of the Martian atmosphere. Or maybe water from melting ice flows down hillsides and soaks the perchlorate in the soil. Or maybe water is trickling out of an aquifer.

That doesn’t mean Mars has frogs and bulrushes. It’s not clear how much water is flowing on the surface, but each wet place may be less of a stream and “more of a sludge,” said planetary scientist David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute, who was not a part of the study team. Anyway, perchlorates are toxic.
“Water is the elixir of life,” said Mars expert Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, who wasn’t part of the study either. Still, “I wouldn’t particularly want to live in a perchlorate fluid.” Ojha concedes the briny water spotted by his team would not be hospitable to living creatures.

All the same, the seeps could be “an important source of water for a future human mission to Mars,” Bishop said via email, and its presence in a wide variety of Martian terrains indicates there are water cycles on Mars that Earthlings don’t fully understand, though humans have sent a fleet of sophisticated satellites and rovers to scour the planet.
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[DocM]

[FloatingFatMan]

So! Checklist for the Mars Mission!

Space suit.
Food.
Speedos!
Speedboat!
Water Skis!

[Unobscured Vision]

It's extremely briny, likely more so than the Dead Sea. We certainly wouldn't be able to use it for consumption, although we could use it for other chemical processes that we have planned for ahead of time.

Since we already knew about the presence of perchlorates, this really doesn't change much of anything other than they are easier to get. In fact, it could complicate Hab and Module designs, which now have to account for the presence of those subliminating and refreezing liquids on their surfaces and joints. Such liquids that repeatedly freeze and thaw can and will wreak havok on joints, fittings, and anything else metallic or otherwise that they are allowed to collect upon, as we well know.

So if anything, Mars got a bit more difficult to Colonize.

[spacer]

This is a huge discovery. Finding liquid water, however briny, on the surface of another planet other than our own is major. It's implications are incredible. So cool!

So! Checklist for the Mars Mission!

Space suit.
Food.
Speedos!
Speedboat!
Water Skis!

Do the speedos go on over the space suit?

[+John. Subscriber¹]

This is a huge discovery. Finding liquid water, however briny, on the surface of another planet other than our own is major. It's implications are incredible. So cool!

Do the speedos go on over the space suit?

Of course, else how do you know they're on? 

 

Hopefully this spurs on the race to Mars. We need some people up there, damnit!

[Skiver Veteran]

This is just left over from some of Mark Watneys many catastrophes, nothing to see here, move along.

[Sszecret Veteran]

Yep, there's definitely water on Mars. 

 

[MS Bob 11]

For a second, I read NASA as NSA. 

[DocM]