spacetoday.net: New study makes past oceans on Mars unlikely

Posted: Fri, Aug 22, 2003, 1:44 PM ET (1744 GMT)
Hubble image of Mars

A new analysis of data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has concluded that while some liquid water may have existed on Mars early in its history, it was unlikely in the quantities requires to form the oceans that some scientists thought may have existed on the planet. The thermal emission spectrometer on MGS has turned up trace amounts of carbonates, minerals that form in the presence of water. However, the instrument detected far less carbonate than expected, and only in dust and not as rock outcroppings. This has led scientists to conclude that while water may exist on Mars, it never formed the global oceans some had predicted existed early in the planet's history, when it was warmer and presumably wetter than today. A number of geologic features, including large, flat basins in the planet's northern latitudes, had led some to suspect that Mars once harbored oceans. The research results were published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.