NASA Disclose More Information About Water and Life on Mars

The impact of atmosphere changes due to natural pole shifting on our planetary neighbor Mars have been discussed by NASA boffins. News images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have shown in detail how atmosphere changes are affecting the red planet during axis shifts.

There have been newly found deposits of dry ice and possible water beneath the CO2 ice fields of Mars, which could help further the cause for a manned mission in the future to the red planet.

If water in large amounts is present on the surface of Mars this would be great news for teams of NASA explorers who would build base stations on the planet. The presence of water on Mars could also bring evidence of life on the planet, albeit life may only be in bacterial form or very primitive.

The deputy team leader for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Shallow Radar Roger Philips said, "We already knew there is a small perennial cap of carbon-dioxide ice on top of the water ice there, but this buried deposit has about 30 times more dry ice than previously estimated."

The actual team leader for the Shallow Radar Roberto Seu of Sapienza University of Rome also stated: "We identified the deposit as dry ice by determining the radar signature fit the radio-wave transmission characteristics of frozen carbon dioxide far better than the characteristics of frozen water,"

"When you include this buried deposit, Martian carbon dioxide right now is roughly half frozen and half in the atmosphere, but at other times it can be nearly all frozen or nearly all in the atmosphere," Phillips continued.

Talking about the effect of the Mars tilt Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California said: A tilted Mars with a thicker carbon-dioxide atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect that tries to warm the Martian surface, while thicker and longer-lived polar ice caps try to cool it."

"Our simulations show the polar caps cool more than the greenhouse warms. Unlike Earth, which has a thick, moist atmosphere that produces a strong greenhouse effect, Mars' atmosphere is too thin and dry to produce as strong a greenhouse effect as Earth's, even when you double its carbon-dioxide content."

The Martian atmosphere has thrown up a few surprises in the past that have left scientists baffled, but the latest revelations are helping science answer a few questions instead of creating a lot of head scratching.

Back in 2009 the discovery of Methane Gas in the atmosphere of Mars had NASA scientists bouncing around the theory table. NASA even stated that the discovery proved that Mars is "not a dead planet."

NASA have been involving themselves in the theory that there is some sort of life among all the surface dust.

Talking about methane in 2009 Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center stated: "Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas."

He expressed further: "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, California."

When one reads all the facts put together by NASA within the two stories recently released on the NASA official website a story of historical impact is beginning to emerge. NASA are in fact starting to slowly disclose information regarding life in the Universe, what is even more amazing is that this life is right on our doorstep in cosmic terms.

Life being so close to Earth have massive ramifications for science and theories revolving around just how much life is present in the Universe, and dispels the myth that life only exists on Earth.

The two articles regarding water and life on the red planet can be found on the NASA website at:

1. NASA Orbiter Reveals Big Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

2. Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet