Water on Mars any point in the year but would be ideal for solid carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide melting in the warmer summer would yield liquid carbon dioxide which would then form the gullies. Even if gullies are carved by flowing water at the surface, the exact source of the water and the mechanisms behind its motion are not understood. The dry gullies are deep grooves etched into the slopes that are there year-round. There are many other features on Mars, and some of them change seasonally. In August 2011, NASA announced the discovery by undergraduate student Lujendra Ojha of current seasonal
Life on Mars NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Analysis of Martian sandstones, using data obtained from orbital spectrometry, suggests that the waters that previously existed on the surface of Mars would have had too high a salinity to support most Earth-like life. Tosca "et al." found that the Martian water in the locations they studied all had water activity, a ≤ 0.78 to 0.86—a level fatal to most Terrestrial life. Haloarchaea, however, are