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NASA has announced that it has discovered prove of flowing liquid salt water on Mars during the Red Planet's summer months, in what is the biggest indication to date that the planet either has already supported life, or can support life in the future. The discovery comes cheers to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its imaging spectrometer, which enabled researchers to find telltale signs of hydrated minerals on streaked-looking slopes. Needless to say, this could alter both the course of planetary scientific discipline and the search for life in and beyond our solar system.

These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks called recurring slope lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks chosen recurring gradient lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by gimmicky flowing water. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Academy of Arizona)

"Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water,' in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing scientific discipline that validates what we've long suspected," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA'due south Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a statement. "This is a meaning development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

The flows are described equally recurring slope lineae. Here'southward what happens: The hydrated salts lower the freezing point of the liquid brine, the same style salt helps melt snowfall and ice on our roads afterward a blizzard. The darker color on Mars indicates that it'due south probably a shallow subsurface menses, NASA said. While scientists are yet able to determine where the water comes from, it appears to dry up in the planet'due south fall flavour only to first upwards again the following Mars year.

Researchers began studying from the MRO'due south High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) in 2022, and later paired those images with mineral maps from the spacecraft's Meaty Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

"Nosotros found the hydrated salts simply when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration," said Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Constitute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, lead author of a Nature Geoscience report on these findings. "In either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the germination of these streaks."

During the announcement today, NASA scientists noted they mined information going as far back as the Viking i an two landings in the mid-1970s, as well as from the Phoenix lander in 2008. But the principal data source was the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2006 and contains four other primary scientific discipline instruments in addition to HiRISE and CRISM.

NASA Mars streaks flowing water

"The ability of MRO to notice for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a large step towards explaining what they are," said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

"It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know in that location is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet," said Michael Meyer, atomic number 82 scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency'south headquarters in Washington. "It seems that the more nosotros study Mars, the more than we learn how life could be supported and where in that location are resources to back up life in the future."

Dorsum in March, NASA announced the discovery of evidence of an ancient ocean that covered twenty percent of Mars' surface. The data from that report, using the ESO'due south Very Big Telescope in Chilie, seemed to indicate that water persisted on the surface of the Scarlet Planet for at least a billion years. Now it seems that despite the frigid temperatures during the winter and at night, some water still indeed flows on the surface even today.