Liquid water collects in the Martian soil each night, before evaporating during the day, according to NASA's Curiosity rover. If future missions can confirm this water cycle, it means astronauts could one day farm moisture to provide drinking water on Mars.
Planetary scientists have seen a lot of evidence for frozen water at the Martian poles, and water vapour in the planet's atmosphere. Liquid water, on the other hand, has been harder to come by, as the temperature and atmospheric pressure at the surface is too low.
perchlorate salts in the planet’s soil are lowering the freezing temperature of water, setting up conditions for liquid brines to form at equatorial regions, new research from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows. Findings, published in this week’s Nature Geoscience, are based on nearly two years worth of atmospheric humidity and temperature measurements collected by the roving science laboratory Curiosity, which is exploring an ancient impact basin called Gale Crater near the planet’s equator.
The brines, computer models show, form nightly in the upper 2 inches of the planet’s soil as perchlorates absorb atmospheric water vapor. As temperatures rise in the morning, the liquid evaporate
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