Water on Mars

Since its arrival in December 2003 Europe's Mission to Mars has been studying the composition of the atmosphere, mapping the surface and diving into the subsurface of Earth's neighbour to find further evidence that water once flowed on the planet and could still be present. The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard Mars Express has delivered grandiose vistas of the Martian landscape. The camera has discovered accumulation of ice and snow and even a frozen sea. There are also indications of wet, warmer spaces beneath the surface of the red planet. These are places in which life might have possibly developed. In November 2005 the Mars Principal Investigators exalted with the discovery of subterranean water. Mars's Radar Altimeter revealed the presence of deposits of pure water hidden at a depth of several kilometres within a buried basin. The OMEGA Visible and Infrared Mineralogical Mapping Spectrometer detected minerals on the surface of Mars that revealed the history of Martian water and demonstrated that water could have been stable on Mars's surface but not for very long. Mars Express's discoveries have led scientists to the conclusion that Mars was long ago covered by vast oceans, and that only sporadically water reappeared on the planet's surface later on.

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