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NASA: Mars had surface water

Posted on: Wednesday, 24 March 2004, 06:00 CST

NASA: Mars had surface water

Rock with ripples considered evidence of a pool of salt water at least 2 inches deep

By ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Pasadena, Calif. -- Mars had a shallow pool of briny water on its surface long ago, NASA said Tuesday in announcing what could be the strongest evidence yet that the now-dry red planet was once hospitable to life.

The space agency's scientists announced previously that the Opportunity rover found evidence of water in Mars' distant past.

But it was unclear whether the water was in the soil or on the surface. The new findings suggest there was a pool of salt water at least 2 inches deep.

A rocky outcropping examined by the rover had ripple patterns and concentrations of salt, which are considered telltale signs that the rock formed in standing water.

"We think Opportunity is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars," said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, the mission's main scientist.

The findings add to the growing body of evidence that the red planet was once a wetter and possibly warmer place that may have been conducive to life.

"This is a profound discovery, it has profound implications for astrobiology, and I'd like to say if you have an interest in searching for fossils on Mars, this is the first place you'd want to go," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.

Although Squyres referred to the water as a sea, scientists said it is not clear how big the body of water might have been, or whether it was in fact a fixed feature and not just a desert basin that flooded periodically.

The evidence also does not indicate when or for how long water covered the broad and flat region where Opportunity landed, called Meridiani Planum.

Nor do the findings represent evidence that any organisms actually lived on Mars.

If life did flourish at the site when it was awash in water, the type of rock found there is capable of preserving evidence of any biological material, Squyres said.

"If we are correct in our interpretation, this was a habitable environment," he said.

"These are the kinds of environments that are very suitable for life."

The findings were presented at a televised news conference at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington.

Weiler noted that a group of outside scientists was brought in to review the rover-mission scientists' findings before they were announced.

The findings give NASA impetus to expand its Mars exploration program to learn whether microbes ever existed there and, ultimately, whether people can live there, Weiler said.

NASA plans to send a more sophisticated rover to Mars in 2009 to probe for signs of life.

In 2013, the space agency plans to send a robotic mission that would collect rock and soil samples and bring them back to Earth for more detailed analysis.

NASA intends to send one or more unmanned missions to Mars every 26 months.

President Bush recently proposed a manned mission to visit the planet but did not set a timeline for such an undertaking, which probably remains decades away.

Today, Mars is largely dry and cold. It contains trace amounts of water vapor in its atmosphere and large caps of frozen water at its poles. Spacecraft also have detected significant amounts of ice mixed in the Martian soil at high latitudes.

For decades, spacecraft in orbit around Mars have also detected evidence that large amounts of liquid water once flowed across the surface, carving vast and sinuous networks of channels.

But the new findings provide the first definitive evidence from rocks on the surface of Mars that liquid water once pooled on the surface.

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