SPACE.com -- Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) is forcing a reexamination and revision of theories about Mars

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	Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) is forcing a reexamination and revision of theories about Mars By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 04:40 pm ET 14 March 2001

Water fights

Hotly debated at the conference is last year’s blockbuster announcement that evidence for liquid water on Mars had been spotted seeping onto the Martian surface in the geologically recent past.

Not so fast, said Pascal Lee, a NASA researcher at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. His research suggests that seasonal snow and ice melting can carve out features that look similar to those on Mars thought to be liquid water-formed gullies.

The first two pictures (above) are from the Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) and show a series of troughs and layered mesas in the Gorgonum Chaos region of the Martian southern hemisphere.

"It’s too early to cry for the need for revolution in our thinking of Mars," Lee said.

Another research team, led by D.S. Musselwhite at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, point to another possibility. They argue that liquid carbon dioxide, rather than liquid water may have created the gullies.

Wait-and-see budget

An expedition to Mars is the "what next" in terms of human spaceflight, said Michael Drake, director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He also chairs NASA’s Solar System Exploration Subcommittee.

Drake said he’s taking a wait-and-see-attitude regarding NASA’s new budget in regards to added monies for robotic Mars exploration. In a "sneak peek" document recently issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Bush administration blueprint for NASA calls for a "more robust" Mars exploration effort.

Given added funds, it is not unreasonable that NASA could move up a Mars return sample mission from 2011 to perhaps as early as 2009, Drake said. More money could also support a range of smaller, Scout-class spacecraft dispatched to Mars, he said.

Human treks to the Red Planet

Drake said that the White House budget clearly signals "a vote of no confidence" in NASA’s handling of the space station. That is evident, he said, by deciding not to build the International Space Station any more complete than is necessary to accommodate international partners in the project.

"That savings of billions of dollars plays into the entire question of what's next for human spaceflight. Is the human spaceflight program simply a bus service to swap astronauts out on the International Space Station?" Drake said.

Going back to the Moon has a "been there, done that" feel to it, Drake said. On the other hand, an expedition to Mars has a better chance of exciting the American public, he said.

"In my opinion, we have to think about the current robotic Mars program in this larger context of what’s going to happen to the human exploration side. If, indeed, we start moving in the direction of thinking seriously about sending humans to Mars, we are going to want to know a lot about Mars beforehand," Drake said.

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