Usually posts on The Watershed focus on Earth-bound water. But water, it turns out, can be extraterrestrial, too.
Last week I wrote a story for the Santa Cruz Sentinel on local elementary schoolers learning about NASA research on Mars. The students were excited to learn that liquid water exists on the Red Planet – according to NASA, a recent research paper offers "the strongest evidence yet" for water on Mars.
Martian water is too salty to drink in its current form, the students learned. Still, it could be purified, and perhaps even used to support human exploration in the far-off future. As the authors of the paper wrote, "Water is essential to life as we know it."
Water also exists in the form of white clouds above the surface of Mars. (Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)