Cameron T Current Event

1/19/16

Cameron Todd

Daffy Ducks

NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars

There are eight co-authors of the Nature Geoscience paper, including Mary Beth Wilhelm at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and Georgia Tech; CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; and HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. Others are at Georgia Tech, the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique in Nantes, France.

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September 28, 2015

NASA has discovered more evidence of water on Mars. NASA found mysterious streaks on hill slopes in 2010 but in September of 2015 they found hydrated salts in the streaks. NASA used an Imaging Spectrometer on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to find the salts. MRO has been examining Mars since 2006. The salts keep the water from freezing under minus 10 degrees fahrenheit. NASA observed that the streaks were darker during certain seasons. This could indicate that water freezes during the cold season and flows during the warm season. The presence of water on Mars means there is a better chance of life in outer space because water is an essential for life. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, so astronauts may someday be able to acquire water and also oxygen if needed.

I chose this article because when I heard on the news ‘NASA has found water on Mars’ I was super surprised and I wanted to learn more on the topic. I learned that they actually found the streaks a while ago but NASA didn’t have enough evidence to prove it was water until they found the hydrated salts. I do not have any experience or information to challenge their findings. However, NASA is the biggest space research organization in the USA. I have researched other websites like wikipedia and space.com and learned that European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft captured images of sheets of ice and I am confident that there is water on Mars due to the same findings discussed in these articles. Water is the most important resource to human existence. If we find water on Mars we could possibly use that water here on Earth to help with a predicted water shortage.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars