December 6, 2006 – “You’ve heard of a smoking gun—this the squirting gun,” said Kenneth Edgett of NASA contract firm Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California. The unexpected find emerged from some 240,000 images taken by the long-orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Images taken of the same areas over time showed investigators that liquid water likely flowed through gullies in Martian craters during the past seven years. Telltale deposits of debris suggest that sediments were washed downhill by occasional liquid flows. “The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water,” said Michael Malin, president and chief scientist at Malin Space Science Systems. The firm designed the camera used on the Mars Global Surveyor … [National Geographics]
Comments are closed.