![]() There's almost certainly not enough water for even microbial life, and even if there were, this water is incredibly salty brine, so it would be too salty for almost any type of life." ![]() "These are very thin films of water that could bind to individual soil grains. "The amount of water we're talking about is really microscopic," says study co-author Dr Michael Mischna of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Temperature and humidity measurements taken by the rover indicate water could be absorbed by salts, forming a brine, which lowers the freezing point of water allowing it to form a liquid. The data was collected by Curiosity from the Gale impact crater, which lies just south of the Martian equator. "Our measurements from the Curiosity rover's weather monitoring station show that these conditions exist at night and just after sunrise in the winter." "We have discovered the substance calcium perchlorate in the soil and, under the right conditions, it absorbs water vapour from the atmosphere," says the study's lead author associate professor Morten Bo Madsen of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. The findings reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, indicate water vapour in the Martian atmosphere could form overnight frosts on the ground, which are turned liquid by salts in the Martian soil. ![]() Mars water Mars may have regular deposits of liquid water on its surface according to new data from NASA's Curiosity rover. ![]()
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