Pages

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Water Still Flows on Mars

...NASA announced this morning, showing pictures taken by the Mars Global Surveyor before it fell silent in November.

Actually, I've been waiting for this announcement a couple of days now, and I am a bit disappointed. Evidence (also uncovered by the Global Surveyor) for recent water flows on the Red Planet is a couple of years old. Thus far it has mostly been in the form of gullies in crater walls which appear to have been formed by a liquid cascade of some kind. However, the new pictures also:

...[document] the formation of new craters on the plant's surface and [show] bright, light-coloured deposits in gullies that were not present in previous photos.

They concluded the deposits - possibly mud, salt or frost - were left there when water recently cascaded through the channels.

I think it is one of these deposits visible in the picture top left.

1 comment: