Can we all move to Mars after all? New possibility of water

This images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Photo / NASA

NASA has announced it's discovered new evidence for possible salt water flows during the warmest months on Mars.

The discovery is the closest scientists have come to finding evidence of liquid water on the planet's surface, the administration said today at a press conference at its Washington headquarters.

"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbour life in some form," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.

"It reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the planet since 2006, has found "dark, finger-like features" which appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring.

These features have been found on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of the planet's southern hemisphere.

Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, the principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, said: "The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water."

Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows of liquid brine fit the features' characteristics better than alternate hypotheses.

Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of water.

The water is expected to be salty as previous studies of the planet has found the planet's surface to be salty.

Seven such sites on the planet have been confirmed, with 20 more possible. Some of the sites have 1,000 individual flows.

The features are only 0.5-5 metres wide, and hundreds of metres long.

The study does not prove water exists, but identifies it as the best explanation.

"I think it's going to be laboratory experiments on Earth that give us the best confirmation or refutation," CNN reported Alfred McEwen as saying.

- Herald Online staff