http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-03s.htmlSan Diego - Nov 17, 2003
Newly seen details in a fan-shaped apron of debris on Mars may help settle a decades-long debate about whether the planet had long-lasting rivers instead of just brief, intense floods.
Pictures from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show eroded ancient deposits of transported sediment long since hardened into interweaving, curved ridges of layered rock. Scientists interpret some of the curves as traces of ancient meanders made in a sedimentary fan as flowing water changed its course over time.
"Meanders are key, unequivocal evidence that some valleys on early Mars held persistent flows of water over considerable periods of time," said Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, which supplied and operates the spacecraft's Mars Orbiter Camera.
"The shape of the fan and the pattern of inverted channels in it suggest it may have been a real delta, a deposit made where a river enters a body of water," he said. "If so, it would be the strongest indicator yet Mars once had lakes."And making it a better bet that perhaps, even if only briefly, there was life?