Mars Rover Turns Up Evidence Of Water

New submitter horselight writes "Recent data obtained from Mars indicates the environment is not as hostile to life as once thought. 'An examination of data gathered by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reveals deposits that, on Earth, are only created by water moving through the rock.' The study's lead author, Steve Squyres, said, 'From landing until just before reaching the Endeavour rim, Opportunity was driving over sandstone made of sulfate grains that had been deposited by water and later blown around by the wind. These gypsum veins tell us about water that flowed through the rocks at this exact spot. It's the strongest evidence for water that we've ever seen with Opportunity.' Gypsum veins and other features indicating water movement on the surface of Mars have been observed to be much more common than previously thought."

Comments

Re:Haven't we seen this before?

[Tirian]

The working theory is that the lack of a strong magentosphere on Mars has allowed the solar wind to cause much of the water that was once present to be lost to space.

--Michael

SHOCKING NEWS!

[bertok]

The previous 500 articles about evidence of water on Mars just weren't sufficient to drive the point home. Anyone could have missed these articles that are posted. Every. Bloody. Month.

Mounting Evidence for Water on Mars
Surprising Further Evidence for a Wet Mars
Mars Images Reveal Evidence of Ancient Lakes
Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars
New Images Reveal Pure Water Ice On Mars
"Puddles" of Water Sighted on Mars
Positive Proof of Water on Mars
A Third of Mars Could Have Been Underwater
NASA Says Mars Once "Drenched With Water"
Recent Evidence Of Water On Mars Near Equator
NASA Announces Water Found On Mars

I suspect NASA has a PR department dedicated to nothing else other than churning out press releases about discoveries of water on Mars, and for some strange reason, every one of them must be reposted on Slashdot by some OCD person.

You think I'm exaggerating? Check this out! A search for "water" and "mars" restricted to the "nasa.gov" site yields over 842,000 hits. That PR department has been busy!

I can't wait for the MSL rover to arrive this August so that we can read even more fascinating press releases about hints of water on Mars.

Re:Water appearing on the surface is not the same.

[bgarcia]

At the poles it is not much of a toss. It is pretty safe to say that if there is water at the poles it is frozen and not very likely to turn liquid at any given time.

In Mars' low-pressure atmosphere, water will behave much like dry ice does on Earth - it converts straight between a solid and a gas without entering a liquid phase.

Phase Diagram of Water

Note that the air pressure averages around 600 pascals. That's below the solid-liquid-gas triple-point in the diagram. And temperatures on Mars tend to be well below the freezing point as well.

Re:Haven't we seen this before?

[phayes]

You're mistaken/misinformed/ignorant. That's not necessarily a bad thing (we were all that way once) but you shouldn't try to correct those who know more about the subject than you do. We've known for decades that the Martian icecaps are in part water, The Phoenix lander confirmed the presence of highly brinated water ice at it's site in 2008 & the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter discovered signs of flowing water in 2011.

The presence of water on Mars in a geologic sense (as in what is needed to produce gypsum) is indeed millennia old as I said. The near total absence of signs of running water on the surface of mars today (look to the MRO reports) does not contradict what I said.