The Change Mariner

Rover Finds Water Once Existed on Mars

The Michigan Daily:

Water percolating through the soil once created a friendly environment that would have been ideal for life to flourish on Mars, NASA scientists say.

It is not known how long this environment lasted or if any organism actually developed. But scientists directing robot rovers prowling the Martian surface said yesterday the evidence now is clear that some rocks were once soaked with liquid water. "The ground would have been suitable for life,"? said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the lead investigator for science instruments on the rover Opportunity. "That doesn't mean life was there. We don't know that."

Mars now is cold and dry and there is no apparent evidence of life on its barren surface.

But Squyres said chemical and geological clues gathered by Opportunity give dramatic proof that at some time in its past, liquid water coursed over the rocks and soils.

Such conditions on Earth, Squyres said at a news conference, "would be capable of supporting life.

"We believe that that place on Mars for some period of time was a habitable environment," he said.