Major Mars Finding Due Next Week
http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000620/sp_mars.html

By Michael Ray Taylor,
Discovery.com News

June 20, 2000 — Space-related listserves were buzzing Tuesday with reports that NASA officials have briefed the White House on a "major" Mars announcement to be made public next week.
Don Savage, a spokesperson at NASA headquarters, refused to comment on the speculation. He would confirm only that NASA would hold a press conference at 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 29, for a so-called Space Science Update, the agency's way of announcing what it considers big discoveries.

But NASA watchers and space scientists on several email discussion groups were claiming Tuesday that the news concerned "exciting" new images obtained by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor.

Speculation as to what such images might reveal centered largely on either a currently active volcanic hot spring or a recent lava flow.

While liquid water appears to have vanished from the surface of Mars in the ancient past, many scientists believe that a layer of groundwater, probably frozen, exists beneath the planet's surface. Evidence of current volcanic activity melting the water and bringing it to the surface would vastly increase the chances of microbial life existing on Mars today.

"If true, such news would not only confirm what we've been thinking is possible all along, but would give us great hope for finding life on Mars in the near future," said Nathalie Cabrol, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center.

NASA's most recent attempt to find water on Mars was the doomed Mars Polar Lander mission.

The probe was to arrive at the planet last December and spend 90 days studying the atmosphere and digging for traces of water beneath the surface near Mars' south pole.

But the craft disappeared without a trace soon after it entered the Martian atmosphere on Dec. 3.

NASA plans to launch its next mission to the Red Planet in 2003.

The Mars Global Surveyor has been in orbit around the planet since 1997.