Just when you thought the Curiosity Rover was just digging up dirt up in vain up on the red planet, it’s gone and struck gold – well, water, actually. That’s right, believe it or not, there’s water on Mars.

Now let’s not get too excited here, Curiosity didn’t stumble across a lake or a river running across the landscape or anything like that. Rather, it found water molecules bound to other minerals in Martian soil. The Rover scooped up some soil, sieved it into its onboard oven, heated it up to 835C to drive off all the volatiles and measured the results. Lo and behold, sweet H2O. There’s kind of a lot of it too. Researchers say every cubic foot of the Martian soil contains about two pints of liquid water, which means two percent of the Martian soil is made of up of the liquid goodness.

This isn’t the first sign of water on the planet, though. In June the Curiosity scooped up a rock that contained a type of clay indicating that Mars was once home to running water. But this discovery proves it. Also, the discovery of water in the Martian soil opens up the door a bit wider for humans to one day survive there – if they can get past the massive amount of radiation, that is.

We now know there should be abundant, easily accessible water on Mars. When we send people, they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water.

That’s from the dean of science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Laurie Leshin.

Time to get your space suit ready.

[Source : Gizmodo]