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I dont think we need more proff that there is water on the Martian surface. There's probably a greater quantity of water below the Martian surface! Ive just been to this amazing site that show the tracks left by the NASA mars rovers. As the wheels moved along the ground, it shows a trail of mud left behind. The site has pictures at the bottom check it out http://www.unseen.net.tc/water_mars.htm And mud has water obviously lol Its very probable that many years ago, Mars had oceans , ceck out the site it shows how Mars looked like billions of years ago!
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The link in the post above has an error. It wasn't hard to find the working link, though.
The pictures in question appear to be those of the bright soil patch that the spirit rover found itself stuck in shortly after its recent wheel failure in late March. IMHO, they indicate the very recent presence of liquid water. The deposits are located under a very shallow layer of surface dust. While the deposition of wind blown dust is relatively slow on Mars, it did not take three billion years to lay down a mere centimeter of dust. It did not even require a thousand years.
Unfortunately, contrary to what the article may say, those pictures are probably neither mud nor ice.
The material is clearly not a frozen block of anything - Spirit got stuck in it.
The material also does not exhibit the sort of adhesion, clumping, or sagging that one would associate with mud or even unusually moist soil. Whatever it is, there isn't enough liquid water left in it to make the grains stick together. Other photos from that incident show that it was churned up by the working wheels, with patches of the bright material thrown up on top of the surface soil or piled on other layers in a thoroughly powdery fashion.
But, it seems to be mostly salt, probably water soluble salts, and all that salt had to get there somehow within the last thousand years. It did not blow in on the wind.
The only obvious way to create that deposit is inundation with liquid brine. Evaporation of the water content would leave a powdery layer of freeze-dried dust and salt, and I believe that is what Spirit found.
Dust and salt are everywhere on Mars - we can't even keep them off of the rover. But water formed deposits that are this geologically young may be rare. This deposit is less than a thousand years old, it is accessible, and Spirit will be sitting just a few meters from it for the next few months. It is entirely possible that there may still be liquid brine only a meter or so beneath the surface at that point. If the process that laid down that salt is still ongoing, Spirit's confinement at Low Haven may enable it to observe traces of it in action.
I'd prefer a front end loader, but the mini thermal emission spectrometer might be sufficient given a few months of continuous observations.
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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thats a great reply made there, i totally agree with you, i fixed the link, it had an extra dot at the end http://www.unseen.net.tc/water_mars.htm
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