NASA : Water flowing on Mars.

Water flows on Mars.

In one image, a shining snake of light flows from a hidden spring into a crater`s depre
an orbiting camera aboard NASA`s Mars Global Surveyor catching sunlight reflected b
evaporating liquid. In another, a smear of ice grows mysteriously over a period of yea
expanding like a slow-motion inkblot over the red planet`s parched landscape.
"If this was coming down the slope [toward you], you`d want to get out of the way," said NASA`s Kenneth Edge
scientist with Malin Space Science Systems. "This is the squirting gun for water on Mars"

"We`ve found it," said Michael Meyer, NASA`s lead scientist on their Mars Exploration Program. "Water seems to
flowed on the surface of today`s Mars." Philip Christensen, a professor from Arizona State University in Tempe,
that the discovery would change NASA`s plans for Mars exploration, not to mention our understanding of the d
world itself.

Mars Global Surveyor, whose extended mission came to an end last month following a power failure, captured t
images while tracking changes in geography over a period of years. Dry gulleys, previously through to have held
no more recently than millions of years ago, were found to have filled between observations.

Certain tasks remain, according to the panelists. For example, a spectrographic analysis of the "white stuff," to
that it is definitely water. These might be carried out by the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter, recently arrived in o
replace the aging Global Surveyor.

"These things appearing bright is extremely unusual," said to NASA panelist Michael Malin, explaining why NASA
believes the apparitions are water, not mere avalanches of dust. "In the past, the things we`ve seen are very d
this requires some kind of fluidizing agent."

Subsurface aquifers or melting ground ice were floated as possible sources of the water. One of the springs eve
appears at a fault line, according to Malin, just as they often do on Earth.

The shortness of the gulleys, which seem to flow for but a few hundred yards, might be accounted for by a pro
similar to a volcano`s eruption on Earth, with water instead of magma building up underground, and ice, inste
fire, characterizing the resulting flow.

"When it reaches the surface, the water freezes and creates a dam that blocks up the water behind it," Edgett
"Eventually the water breaks, causing an outflow of the dam ice, and the water comes bursting out."

Edgett warned against likening it to Earth-bound processes, however, as the geology

dissimilar. "It`s more akin to a flash flood. ... Those mudflows are probably very simi
what this would look like in terms of the body of the flow."

Liquid water is a necessary precondition for life, so the new findings will renew inter
among scientists searching for microbial life on Mars. If subterranean aquifers exist,
boost long-term plans to build a research base on the distant world--and even make
viable than a facility on the moon, where frozen ice, deposited by meteorites and co
the only known source of water.

While Mars` atmosphere is so thin that liquid water evaporates or freezes quickly on
surface, it appears to last long enough to carve snaking gulleys across the planet. Na
counted tens of thousands.

At the conference, NASA also revealed observations of ongoing cratering on the planet`s surface, including a re
impact that released power equivalent to a 100 kiloton nuclear explosion, five times more powerful than the a
bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII.