: NASA to Announce Evidence of Water On Mars

:
: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_water_000620.html

: By Andrew Bridges
: Pasadena Bureau Chief
: and Leonard David
: Senior Space Writer
: posted: 08:03 pm ET
: 20 June 2000

: NASA will announce next week that its Mars Global Surveyor

: spacecraft has turned up evidence of water on the Red
: Planet’s surface, SPACE.com has learned.

: Mars Looms Large
: NASA Chief: Mars Troubles Not Due to Lack of Funding: Daniel
: S. Goldin told the House Science Committee Tuesday that the
: space agency's recent loss of two missions to Mars was not
: the result of a tight budget at the space agency. Want to
: Learn More?

: Study Shows Public Supports Mars Trip: A healthy majority of
: the public is ready to give the thumbs-up on sending U.S.
: astronauts to Mars. They are also backing the building of a
: space station. Those are among the findings of a
: wide-ranging survey released by the National Science Board,
: a governing body of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
: Want to Learn More?

: Sources close to the agency’s Mars program said the find
: involves evidence of seasonal deposits that could be
: associated with springs on the planet’s surface.

: NASA plans to make the blockbuster announcement during a press
: conference scheduled for June 29, sources said, one day
: before a paper detailing the find is published in the
: journal Science.

: The discovery, if confirmed, would mark the achievement of a
: primary goal in NASA’s program to explore Mars. NASA
: scientists on the Mars Global Surveyor team declined to
: comment.

: NASA’s ambitious plans for Mars focus on gaining an
: understanding of the potential for either past or present
: life on the planet. The program also aims to improve
: science’s understanding of Mars’ climate and its resources.

: Key to all three themes is water: Where and when it may have
: flowed in the past, where it might lurk today and in which
: forms and what quantities.

: Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science,
: told the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Studies Board
: on June 14 that the Mars program needs a clear-cut vision.
: The real reason to go is to find out if life is there or
: not, he said.

: View SPACE.com's picture gallery of Mars.

: "To meet that long-term mission requires that you follow
: the water. Without water there is not life…there was not
: life," Weiler said. "By following the water, it
: all fits together. So for the first time, we have a really
: good, clear, long-term vision for Mars."

: Water most likely flowed in the distant past on Mars, carving
: channels and other features clearly visible on its surface.
: But other than in the form of clouds and ice, liquid water
: cannot exist on the planet’s surface today, thanks to the
: thinness of its atmosphere.

: Scientists have hypothesized that vast stores of water could
: still persist beneath the surface of Mars.

: NASA has suggested that certain martian features, as seen in
: this 1997 image, may indicate fluid seepage.

: In a 1997 Mars Global Surveyor image, shown above, scientists
: proposed that water could have seeped from the walls of
: this unnamed crater in the planet’s southern hemisphere,
: and perhaps even pooled at the bottom of the impact basin.

: At the time NASA originally released the image, it urged
: caution about adopting any one hypothesis explaining its
: details. Although the labeled version shown here lists
: water-related sources for the crater’s features, NASA
: stressed they could also be explained by the flow of lava.

: Although the features could be explained by the presence of
: water, as in this labeled image, they could be volcanic in
: origin.

: Finding water on Mars will likely put spurs into future
: mission planning: The American space agency will in
: upcoming weeks announce whether it will send an orbiter or
: lander spacecraft to Mars in 2003. (In 2001, it plans to
: send only an orbiter to the planet.)

: "It's not like people don’t suspect there's water on
: Mars. We certainly know there was probably water in the
: past in fairly good quantities with all these older
: features," said Jack Farmer, an astrobiologist in the
: Department of Geology at Arizona State University, Tempe.

: "But actually finding a place where water might make it
: to the surface, or at least some expression of it such as
: gases emitted into the atmosphere…that would be a big
: deal," he added.

: The finding of upwelling water could mean striking biological
: pay dirt, Farmer said.

: "In that situation, where you have water coming up from
: depth, into the surface, you might be replenishing the
: ground ice there on a fairly regular basis. Even if you
: never got liquid water to the surface you might be able to
: sequester organic materials, prebiotic chemistry or life,
: whatever, in the ground ice inventory, which you could
: access then by shallow drilling," Farmer said.

: By finding liquid water near the surface, or actually part of
: the surface environment, "you could really move the
: whole question of searching for life ahead significantly, I
: think," Farmer said. "You could do some sort of
: shallow drilling program in a robotic sense, well in
: advance of any human missions," he said.
_________________________________________________________________

Hadn't seen the forum till just now, or I would have paid more attention when a family member announced that NBC5 in Chicago
had reported "they found water on Mars". Here's a link to the
abcnews.com article: