Surf’s Up! Turns Out Water Flows On Mars

Pack your bags (and don’t forget your boogie board) because they just found water on Mars.

In a canny bit of promotion for Ridley Scott’s The Martian – in cinemas this week! – scientists analyzing NASA data have discovered evidence of flowing water on the Red Planet.

According to ABC News, the confirmation comes after a decade of debate over what has caused dark streaks on Martian slopes, nicknamed “recurring slope lineae”. (Look, it’s not super catchy, but as with all surfer nicknames, we’re certain it has some kind of bodacious origin story.)

It has finally been reported in the journal Nature Geoscience that those slopes contain hydrated salts; the kind that precipitate from water. The streaks appear to “ebb and flow over time,” indicating movement.

Those streaks, by the way, amount to the approximate length of an American football field.

The findings are the result of higher-than-ever resolution photographs, courtesy of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Two big questions remain (one of which David Bowie has been asking for decades): is there – or was there ever - life on Mars, and will it be hospitable to humans sometime in the future?

On that first query, we may be getting closer to an answer.

NASA’s planetary science director Jim Green said this of the new findings.

"Mars is not the dry, arid planet we thought of in the past ... it once had extensive water resources," he said.

"Mars suffered a major climate change and lost its surface water. Today we're revolutionising our understanding of this planet."

NASA’s associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, was more bullish on the discovery: "It suggests that it would be possible for life to be on Mars today."

More pressingly, will humans soon be able to go all Total Recall and get our butts to Mars?

Researcher Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology believes there’s a “long way to go” before Mars can be repurposed into Earth’s very own Wet ’n Wild waterpark.

However, a manned mission just became slightly more likely. NASA is hoping to reach Mars sometime in the 2030s.

Photographs courtesy of NASA’s Tumblr.