Water! Water on Mars! Curiosity finds water on Mars!

As Wall-E left on the planet, Curiosity has a laser on pebbles, analyzes the elements, makes holes, advance again ... except this time Curiosity discovered water in the Martian soil. The NASA scientists have published five articles in Science in detail the experiences that led to this discovery. You read that right. There is water on Mars.

Even if there is reason to be excited, you still need perspective. Curiosity has not discovered a lake in a mountain, or even a stream. Instead, he found water molecules bound to minerals in the Martian soil. But there are many . Researchers believe that 0.03 cubic meters of Martian soil contains the equivalent of 1 liter of water (that's how many liters per cubic meter?). In all, the Martian soil is composed of 2% water.

"We tend to think that Mars is a dead planet, but find the water surface and fairly easy to extract from the ground is exciting for me," said Laurie Leshin (Dean of Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in The Guardian . She also explained how they came to this discovery.

Curiosity took a sample of Martian soil before putting in SAM, a French analysis instrument on board the rover. "We heated [sample] to 835 ° C, sucked all the fumes and we measured." SAM is able to finely analyze the vapors. It can detect water and all escaping combustion.

Of course, this is not the first sign of water on the red planet. In June , Opportunity has found a piece of rock that contained a type of clay that can be formed only in a neutral area with water. What did the scientists say that Mars had a day of water on its surface.And of course, scientists suspect long the presence of water have shaped the landscape that the surface of Mars, but still in the distant past. In fact, it's been known that water had flowed in abundance on Mars, perhaps as much as on Earth.

But this discovery is important for many reasons, but it is especially exciting for what it means to the future missions to Mars.


"We now know that there is water in abundance and readily available on Mars.When we send people, they can dig anywhere on the surface, the heat a little, and they have water. "

With Leshin, life on Mars seems simple. Especially because this water could also be used to make fuel that would return astronauts to Earth. It also remains to know how to survive the deadly radiation involved in such space travel.