Mars: Could It Be the Kind of Place to Raise Your Kids?

Once again, squinting hard at satellite photos of the forbidding Red Planet indicates that…there….just….might….be some water there for the young 'uns to splash around in, despite it being cold as hell. From the Daily Mail account:

NASA researchers have documented the formation of new craters on the plant's surface and found bright, light-coloured deposits in gullies that were not present in previous photos.

They concluded the deposits - possibly mud, salt or frost - were left there when water recently cascaded through the channels.

In another photo a number of gullies on a crater wall can be clearly seen. The scientists believe that they may have been formed in relatively recent Martian history by erosion caused by flowing, liquid water.

The pictures were captured in October by the unmanned spacecraft the Mars Global Surveyor, which carries the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC), and circumnavigates Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun in the solar system.

Ron Bailey back in 2004 on why you don't need government-sponsored Rocket Men to get to Mars; Tim Cavanaugh from earlier this year on why we may never get off this damned Big Blue Marble no matter how moist Mars might be; a 1999 classic Reason feature from the New York Times's John Tierney speculating on various possibilities for a human future on Mars; and a not-safe-for-work model kit of Dejah Thoris, Edgar Rice Burroughs' princess of Mars.