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March 23 -- A salty sea once washed over the plains of Mars at the Opportunity rover's landing site, creating a life-friendly environment more earthlike than any known on another world, NASA scientists announced today.
The rover found evidence for the shores of a large body of surface water that contained currents, which left their marks in rocks that developed at the bottom of the sea. Opportunity found a distinct chemical makeup in the rocks and unique layering patterns that must have been generated by slow-moving water in an evaporating sea, researchers said.
The discovery casts fresh light on the possibility that critters could have gained a toehold on the red planet when it was younger, warmer and wetter. Geologists inside and outside NASA are elated over the discovery, saying it could resolve a decades-long debate over whether Mars ever was in fact warmer.
Scientists don't yet know how deep the sea was, exactly when it existed or for how long.
The finding builds on the March 2 announcement that Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity landed, had long ago been soaked with water. Geologists could not tell from those initial results whether the water was above the surface or only underground.
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