Previous Evidence of Water on Mars Now Identified as Grainflows
usgs.gov
usgs.gov
So, this article says there's no water on the surface of Mars, rather than underneath it.
Though it looks like this suggests that water beneath the surface is unlikely to be there as well?
There's nothing more lowering of discussion quality otherwise; it's like a snake in snakes and ladders.
The main driver is that the flows seem to be associated with seasonally higher temperatures, and therefore the flows ("RSL") may be caused by a melting brine. RSLs have been controversial and they have gotten a lot of attention from planetary scientists.
also an isotope in the sand would have allowed water to stay flowing at the below freezing temperatures that mars has, so if you were grasping for straws at why there would be water, this would support it, but if you weren't wishing there was water there as the presupposition then this new answer would have been more immediately obvious
Comets, to start, are mostly water. If you're patient, you can redirect some very sightly while they're in the far end of the system and have them impact Mars. Takes a while though. Also, big boom when they arrive.
Really though, there's plenty of carbon <edit>oxygen, in the form of carbon dioxide</edit> on Mars- you just need hydrogen. Jupiter is mostly that. With a very large fleet of ships, you might be able to bring some to Mars. Solar sails might help keep costs low, and ideally they're fully autonomous. Heck, if that works, you'd probably want to start doing the same trick and pouring hydrogen into Venus while taking away CO2.
I'm sure there's other ways too. Plus, we know there is some water on Mars already. If we can use it carefully, reuse exhaustively, it could sustain a large population.
Oxygen. Oxygen is what Mars already has, in the form of CO2, carbon dioxide.
do we know that?
what i'm reading with regards to this article and comments is that now we're back to not having any concrete evidence of this
There's nothing there on Mars that would ever make human habitation profitable or self-sustaining.
Mars likely does not have life at the surface. Too much cosmic radiation. It may not have life at all but if it does it would be beneath the surface or in deep caves.
It's not like there are fossil fuels on the Red Planet, so we're going to need solar cells and batteries to power our electric rovers.
> rocks move when large ice sheets a few millimeters thick floating in an ephemeral winter pond start to break up during sunny days. These thin floating ice panels, frozen during cold winter nights, are driven by wind and shove rocks at up to 5 m/min.
"The preference for warm seasons and the detection of hydrated salts are consistent with some role for water in their initiation. However, liquid water volumes may be small or zero, .."