Amazing. It’s been suspected since we first saw Mars up close, but to actually validate that water exists on Mars is a tremendous discovery.
(CNN)Potentially life-giving water still flows across the ancient surface of Mars from time to time, NASA scientists said Monday in revealing a potential breakthrough in both the search for life beyond Earth and human hopes to one day travel there.
While the discovery doesn’t by itself offer evidence of life on Mars, either past or present, it does boost hopes of that the harsh landscape still offers some refuge to life.
“The existence of liquid water, even if it is super salty briny water, gives the possibility that if there’s life on Mars, that we have a way to describe how it might survive,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.
(CNN) — MAVEN has arrived in Mars’s orbit after traveling 442 million miles in the course of 10 months to get there.
It won’t land on the red planet but instead study Mars’ atmosphere from above to answer questions about its climate change, NASA says.
NASA’s MAVEN craft will live up to its formal name — the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution craft — by helping scientists figure out how ancient Mars changed so dramatically into the planet we know today.
It is the first mission devoted to studying the upper Martian atmosphere as a key to understanding the history of Mars’ climate, water and habitability.
