Monday, April 12, 2010

Liquid Water... On Mars!?



The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the coolest robots ever sent forth from Earth's warm berth into the cold deep unknown by NASA, has returned back some amazing data from it's HiRISE camera once again. MRO's primary mission is to orbit Mars and take high resolution photos in the name of SCIENCE! Luckily for us, it snapped the picture above which shows evidence for liquid water on Mars.

A billion years ago, liquid water was abundant on Mars. But now? We used to think "No way!" because there's so little atmospheric pressure and it's soooo cold. The question is, can water stick around for a few seconds or even minutes to create the channels seen above? Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has details.

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