Friday, July 9th, 2010

Mars Water

Locations of nine exposures of hydrated silicate in northern plain craters, shown on a Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter shaded relief map. Black squares indicate sites investigated with CRISM that did not yield detections. Image courtesy of Science/AAAS.

Although it's been years since the first publications of signs of water on Mars, support for the idea of lots of liquid water in the planet's past keeps coming in. We'll talk about the latest findings and how they fit into the larger picture of the Red Planet's possibly soggy past.

Guests

Ron Cowen
Astronomy Writer, Science News
Washington DC

Related Links

Segment produced by:Annette Heist

Image: Reconstruction of the putative Martian ocean that would have covered one third of the planet., described in June 13 2010 Nature Geoscience.
Credit B.Hynek.

Image: Mars Global Surveyor image from June, 2000 showing gullies in Noachis Terra. Do the gullies indicate the presence of recent liquid water?
Malin Space Science Systems, MGS, JPL, NASA.