This event took place on 4th April 2005 at 3:30pm (14:30 GMT)
Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall Campus, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Images taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars show a frozen body of water, less than 5 million years old, about the size of the North Sea beneath the surface of Mars. Dr Murray is the lead author of a paper in Nature and has been working with the Mars Express imaging team. It is becoming increasingly possible that this area may have supported life in the recent geological past and the area also coincides with the most significant current methane fluxes and therefore may be an environment where life continues to thrive. This considerably raises the need to return to Mars with analytical packages capable of identifying biologically produced methane and even drill down to the remnant water.
More information on the discovery is on the CEPSAR website cepsar.open.ac.uk
Images taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, currently orbiting Mars show a frozen body of water, less than 5 million years old, about the size of the North Sea beneath the surface of Mars. Dr Murray is the lead author of a paper in Nature and has been working with the Mars Express imaging team. It is becoming increasingly possible that this area may have supported life in the recent geological past and the area also coincides with the most significant current methane fluxes and therefore may be an environment where life continues to thrive. This considerably raises the need to return to Mars with analytical packages capable of identifying biologically produced methane and even drill down to the remnant water.
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