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- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
- The idea that water might be present on Mars, making it possibly suitable
for humans, goes back to the late 1870s.
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- That's when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli
spotted what he described as "canali" on the red planet's surface.
The word means channels but was interpreted as canals, and that's when
speculation about a civilization on Mars first arose.
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- With a possible announcement today that water in liquid
form might have been spotted beneath the Mars surface by the Global Surveyor
spacecraft, scientists anew will be speculating about the possibility of
some sort of life there.
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- "We don't know what they found, but it's conceivable
water could be seeping out, maybe 200 yards beneath the surface,"
said John Brandenburg, a physicist with Aerospace Corp., a Washington-based
organization that works with NASA and other U.S. government agencies.
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- During the years, Brandenburg also has become known for
his investigations of the possibility of water existing on Mars, and in
the 1980s speculated that vast oceans may have been present hundreds of
millions of years ago.
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- He also is the co-author of a recent book, Dead Mars,
Dying Earth, which looks closely at both planets. Since the late 1970s,
when the Mariner spacecraft revealed evidence of possible geysers, scientists
have been holding out hope that water existed on Mars.
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- But never before has the possibility existed that liquid
water could be present on the red planet, Brandenburg said. "This
could be a big deal; if you have liquid water, you have bacteria living
in it," he said.
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- Last year, NASA hoped that the Mars Polar Lander would
detect water ice at the Martian South Pole. But the mission never took
place after the spacecraft was destroyed.
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- The discovery of water in the warmer climes of Mars,
south of the Martian equator, would be far more significant, Brandenburg
said. "Water seepage, rather than ice, is extremely important,"
he said. "If this discovery is borne, it will hasten a human mission
to Mars," Brandenburg added.
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