Mars Global Surveyor - Discovery of Water On Mars

Discovery of Water On Mars

On 6 December 2006 NASA released photos of two craters called Terra Sirenum and Centauri Montes which appear to show the presence of water on Mars at some point between 1999 and 2001. The pictures were produced by the Mars Global Surveyor and are quite possibly the spacecraft's final contribution to our knowledge of Mars and the question of whether life or water exists on the planet.

Hundreds of gullies were discovered that were formed from liquid water, possible in recent times. These gullies occur on steep slopes and mostly in certain bands of latitude.

A few channels on Mars displayed inner channels that suggest sustained fluid flows. The most well-known is the one in Nanedi Valles. Another was found in Nirgal Vallis.

Read more about this topic:  Mars Global Surveyor

Famous quotes containing the words discovery of, discovery, water and/or mars:

    That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.
    George Berkeley (1685–1753)

    There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
    Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)

    I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
    While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
    I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Human beings will be happier—not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.
    Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)