NASA confirms flowing water on Mars

by Emmanuel Giannakopoulos, staff reporter

NASA’s [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provides the strongest evidence of flowing water on Mars that comes and goes continually.

By use of an imaging spectrometer researcher found hydrated minerals on Mars. Mysterious streaks on Mars appear to ebb and flow during the seasons, in the warm seasons they become darker and ride the slopes down slowly, then in the colder seasons they appear to fade away.

“There’s lots of data that says Mars was habitable in the past. The presence of flowing water on Mars today says it could be habitable today just underground. You have energy; you have liquid water. The last thing that we’re waiting on, and which could come from the Curiosity rover, is evidence of complex organic molecules. Those are the fingerprints of life, and have been the object of research for a decade,” Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics Scott Hubbard said.

A major reason that the water is able to be on Mars without freezing is because there are hydrated salts on the slopes which lower the freezing point of the water. According to Dwayne Brown and Laurie Cantillo two NASA reporters, the hydrated salts were only in the water when the seasonal features were widest, meaning that the hydrated salts come in the strongest during the winter.

“Water on Mars is a cool discovery and it’s a good start to see if life could be sustained on Mars,” junior Ronald Baretela said.

This means there may be hope for humanity to live on mars one day.

“Hopefully we can live on Mars one day, that would be really awesome! And it would be a huge experience for mankind,” junior Razmik Degoin said.