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Scientists have discovered the strongest evidence yet that "flowing liquid water" exists on Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Monday morning.

Right now, 140 million miles away, somewhere on the frigid surface of Mars, there is water forming. Scientists announced they have strong evidence that briny water flows on the planet, a critical step toward identifying possible life on Mars. “Water is essential to life as we know it,” wrote Lujendra Ojha, Mary Beth Wilhelm, and their co-authors in a paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience. “The presence of liquid water on Mars today has astrobiological, geologic and hydrologic implications and may affect future human exploration.” If this announcement, which NASA billed as “major” in the days leading up to...

Nasa is preparing to unveil a "major science finding" from its Mars exploration programme, amid speculation it could have found water flowing on the Red Planet. The space agency has scheduled a press conference for Monday, in which it promises to announce a "Mars Mystery Solved". While many are hoping for a discovery of alien life, the leading theory among those who follow research into Mars is an announcement of the presence of liquid water. The speculation has been driven by Nasa's disclosure that Lujendra Ojha, a PhD candidate who discovered possible signs of water as a 21-year-old undergraduate student...

NASA officials will announce Monday morning a major scientific discovery related to their continued exploration of Mars. The agency won’t give too many details on what exactly the big reveal is, apart from the fact that the briefing will feature some pretty big names at the space agency (including Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA HQ; Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program; Lujendra Ojha, a grad student at Georgia Tech; Mary Beth Wilhelm at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and a grad student at Georgia Tech as well; and Alfred McEwen at the University of...

Making spaceships and electric supercars isn’t enough for Elon Musk. Meghan Daum meets the entrepreneur who wants to save the world. The name sounds like a men’s cologne. Or a type of ox. It sounds possibly made up. But then, so much about Elon Musk seems the creation of a fiction writer—and not necessarily one committed to realism. At 44, Musk is both superstar entrepreneur and mad scientist. Sixteen years after cofounding a company called X.com that would, following a merger, go on to become PayPal, he’s launched the electric carmaker Tesla Motors and the aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, which are...

Budget plan would send a SpaceX capsule in 2020 to get samples. Would pick up samples left by Nasa's 2020 Rover. Comes as Amazon's Jeff Bezos unveiled 'megarocket' to take on SpaceX It could bring samples from Mars to Earth for the first time. Nasa employees have revealed details of a 'budget' plan to send a SpaceX capsule to the red planet in 2020 to return samples. Elon Musk has backed the idea - and even tweeted images of what the mission would look like. A Dragon on Mars: The mission would grab samples collected by Nasa's 2020 rover and...

Last week, NASA announced the top 30 finalists for their 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. ... ...Sfero Bubble House design... Construction of the habitat would be begin with a long pole that would drill into the ground and from which two robotic arms would extend. One arm would suck up and sort material from the surface, while the other one would use the material to construct a dome overhead. Printed from Martian soil, the home is partially buried underground so that only the top floor is on the surface. In this space, the astronauts could maintain an indoor garden and workspace. The...

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures. In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said. Solar Cycles Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's...

Global warming on Mars? In the other study, led by Michael C. Malin, features at the south pole were observed to retreat by up to 10 feet (3 meters) from one Martian year to the next. The odd shapes -- circular pits, ridges and mounds -- were first photographed in 1999. Since then, the features have eroded away by up to 50 percent.

Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere more than a billion years before the Earth, say scientists. An examination of meteorites and rocks on the planet suggests that oxygen was affecting the Martian surface four billion years ago. On Earth, oxygen did not build up to appreciable quantities in the atmosphere for at least another 1.5bn years

Taking into account the surface of Mars today, a likely location for this water would be in the Northern Plains, which has long been considered a good candidate because of the low-lying ground. An ancient ocean there would have covered about 20 percent of the planet's surface. By comparison, the Atlantic Ocean occupies 17 percent of Earth's surface. "This ocean had a maximum depth of around 5,000 feet or around one mile deep," Villanueva said. "It's deep - not as deep as the deepest points of our oceans, but comparable to the average depth of the Mediterranean Sea." By combining...

Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently made a discovery "for the history books," but we'll have to wait a few weeks to learn what the new Red Planet find may be, media reports suggest. The discovery was made by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, NPR reported today (Nov. 20). SAM is the rover's onboard chemistry lab, and it's capable of identifying organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it. SAM apparently spotted something interesting in a soil sample Curiosity's huge robotic arm delivered to the instrument recently. "This data is gonna be one for...

Sept 21, 2009 — The Martians are singing How dry I am. Scientists have a new explanation for how Mars turned red without water...

March 5, 2005; Vol. 167, No. 10 , p. 149 Martian Landscaping: Spacecraft eyes evidence of a frozen sea Ron Cowen A flat region near the Red Planet's equator may hold a frozen ocean that was once as deep and big as the North Sea. The region's relatively craterless facade suggests that water gushed to the surface and froze recently, raising the possibility that life might exist today on or just beneath the surface, says Mars Express researcher John Murray. Last week, his team reported its analysis of images that were taken by the orbiting Mars Express spacecraft. In this...

This image shows a digital terrain model of the crater investigated by the University of Arizona's Ali Bramson. Image released August 26, 2015. A giant slab of ice as big as California and Texas combined lurks just beneath the surface of Mars between its equator and north pole, researchers say. This ice may be the result of snowfall tens of millions of years ago on Mars, scientists added. Mars is now dry and cold, but lots of evidence suggests that rivers, lakes and seas once covered the planet. Scientists have discovered life virtually wherever there is liquid water on...

SpaceX's new Crew Dragon capsule may be reserved for astronauts traveling to and from the International Space Station — but now you can take a virtual tour of the vehicle's insides. The company just released interior photos of the spacecraft, as well as a video showing closeups of its control panels and crew seats. The images offer our first glimpse at what the finished Crew Dragon will look like. The photos show an interior that is sleek and smooth, with mostly black and white hardware. It gives off the vibe of a luxury sports car (which makes sense, given CEO...

Ok Ok they're not floating but they are some pretty cool rock formations.http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/01089/mcam/1089ML0048420010500151E01_DXXX.jpg

For the Super Bowl’s golden anniversary, the NFL has asked a big name to return to the stage. Bruno Mars has been offered the headliner spot for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in Santa Clara, California, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Maybe it's just Martian weather making straight lines, 90 degree angles, and cuts that look machine made. I really don't know what to think about these but they sure are interesting. Here are the two images straight from NASA: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/01065/mhli/1065MH0003900010400682E01_DXXX.jpghttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/01049/mcam/1049ML0046190040306064E01_DXXX.jpg The following images are from www.whatsupinthesky.com