So close, yet so far
Nasa's Viking 2 probe came within inches of discovering water on Mars some 33 years ago.
Last week it was announced the sharp-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had spotted water in five freshly-made impact craters.
Scientists now believe a huge ice scheet can be found just 25cm beneath the Martian surface.
Back in 1977, Viking 2 dug down 15cm just next to one of these craters. Do'h!
Viking 2 was most famous for it's life experiment. An on-board lab added nutrients to a Martian soil sample and recorded the gasses which came off.
At first the result was yes, there was life. But this was soon thought to have been a chemical reaction rather than an organic one.
Now these results are going to have to be looked at again as it was believed that Mars was dry.
The amount of water on the Red Planet indicates it could have been a more humid place just 10,000 years or so ago. This is incredibly recent.
Methinks this might be a good time to bet on life being found next door pretty soon.
Weird Science Factoid: A mole can dig a tunnel 300ft long ion just one night. They would have found the ice no problem...
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
