As I suspected today's announcement from NASA is on evidence for
current liquid water flowing on Mars
Nice result, hopefully to be confirmed soon.
Increases imperative to get more wheel on the ground at Mars, and hopefully some boots in the finite future, if properly funded.
Here is the full press release and images
There are a lot of other images showing surface transformations and localised patches of something volatile and flowing appearing within the mission lifetime; very suggestive of subsurface ice becoming fluid and bursting onto the surface (where it has very short lifetime before evaporating or freezing/sublimating).
There will be lots of arguments about whether this is really H2O - actual liquid water, or some other fluid, but it looks pretty good, and since this is clearly a fairly frequent process verification by additional MRS observations should be forthcoming.
This makes the prospects for both fossil life and residual surviving microbial subsurface life on Mars that much more plausible (ie a bit plausible, interestingly plausible... )
Now, if only there were someone getting serious funding to investigate the issue...
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Well, of course we have to keep pouring money into that hole in space, the ISS. And then NASA wants to put a permanent habitation on the moon, which I suppose makes sense in some long-runny sort of way. Maybe they ought to devote some time to finding someone with some actual vision and leadership ability at NASA. Imagine: the search for intelligence at a government bureaucracy.
You might get a kick out of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0TRPnxOcSc