Scientists Searching for Martian Water Say Rover May Have Found Mud

Quotes:

"If the sticky soil has water, Mr. Des Marais says it probably is not much. "To caution, it could be just enough to cause a moistening and a dense concentrated brine," he said. "I wouldn't expect to see a pool of water when we dig. You don't need to have that much to explain these properties that we see."

"One clue to Mars' watery past might come from the next rock inspection by the twin Opportunity rover, which is in the shallow crater where it landed in late January. It is about to scrape into an outcrop of exposed bedrock that has a lot of sulfur on its surface. The lead mission scientist, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, says the presence of the sulfur could mean the rock has embedded sulfate compounds, which can form in volcanic conditions or in water, depending on the specific sulfate. His team will be able to tell which when Opportunity's instruments look inside the bedrock. "

"So, for example, if we look inside and we see evidence for a sulfate that is the kind that forms only in the presence of liquid water, that would be an extraordinarily exciting finding," he said. "It would probably be the most interesting thing we have found yet here."Mr. Squyres was not able to explain the presence of what appear to be puzzling thread-like features seen in Opportunity's microscopic pictures of soil. He suggests that they might be threads from the airbags which cushioned the rover's landing. The airbags, he says, took an awful lot of beating and may have lost fibers in the soil. "I don't know that these things are Martian," he said.

So they've seen the threads too...Pele's hair, I wonder...

Gawd, this is all so much fun!