Nestle Launches Mission to Mars

No, Nestle is not actually flying to Mars. That's just a snarky reference to Nestle's sucking water out of California in orderto bottle it.

When juxtaposed with some of Nestle's earlier behavior, the news that NASA's discovery that there are current water flows on Mars, it is an obvious bit of humor:

Spectroscopic data from NASA

’s 10-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have confirmed years of scientific suspicion that periodic dark streaks appearing on Martian slopes are the result of liquid water flowing on the planet’s surface.

The dark features, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), have been observed for years by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and have appeared on dozens of sites at Mars. This imagery was later correlated with mineral mapping by another instrument, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), which determined that the dark streaks are hydrated minerals — i.e., thin patches of damp soil. The salt lowers the freezing point of the water, allowing it to persist longer in Mars’ thin, cold atmosphere.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science and a former space shuttle astronaut, during a Sept. 28 press conference. “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars.”

This is actually rather significant.

Where there is water, on Earth at least, there is life.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the picture.