Fresh Evidence of Water on the Red Planet

The space scientists are all charged up again with fresh evidence for the presence of water on Mars that an orbiting spacecraft has recently sent back. New, meticulous photographs of Mars support the idea of profound streams of liquid, including water that once flowed long enough that simple forms of life could have easily sustained on it.

Images from a camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration illustrate discontinuous layers of dark- and light-toned rock in a giant rift valley. They portray a landscape of hills and sand dunes interspersed by mineral-faded rocks in primordial underground streams.

“The most interesting aspect we found in these new photos is that we can see that the water, with most likely other dissolved chemicals in it, resided in these areas for weeks or months or longer,” said the study co-author, Chris Okubo, of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. “It means these areas would have been potentially habitable.”

Scientists have been very fervent on finding some hints of microbial or any other form of life that nay exist out there. "If there are any sorts of fossils, these would be good places to look," Chris Okubo said.

The exhilarating findings, published in yesterday's edition of the journal Science, were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Earlier there had been discoveries of dry river channels and lakebeds on Mars but those were not sufficient to prove the existence of life as it was not clear for how long had those areas been wet. Scientists believe that Mars is the only planet in the Solar System, besides Earth which could have supported life.