The hour-long event, which you can watch in the video below, included five top scientists of the space agency who went through their latest big discoveries, most of which indicated the presence of water – liquid, icy, underground, or ancient – on cosmic bodies like Mars, Europa, and Enceladus. Every time we discover traces of water on a planet or a planet’s moon, we are one step closer to finding signs of life. The regular intervals at which we are now finding water all over the Solar System is what’s giving these scientists such confidence. “It’s definitely not an if, it’s a when,” said Jeffrey Newmark, NASA’s interim director of heliophysics. Last year was a remarkable year as we got to know our Solar System better. Data from the Curiosity rover suggested that Mars’s Gale Crater once had a lake that existed for millions of years, promising long enough for life to have formed. The more recent discovery of nitrates on the Red Planet’s surface also points to the possibility of life existing there at some point. In fact, the proofs suggests that Mars once upon a time had more water than the Arctic Ocean. NASA scientists stated last month that if life was going to form somewhere other than Earth, Mars is looking like a pretty good candidate. Another potential candidate where we could find traces of alien life over the next few decades is Jupiter’s water-laden moon, Europa. No guesses. We are headed as well. “Farther afield, observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope suggest that nearly every star in the sky hosts planets – and many of these worlds may be habitable,” says Mike Wall at Space.com. “Indeed, Kepler’s work has shown that rocky worlds like Earth and Mars are probably more common throughout the galaxy than gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.” NASA plans to launch its next Mars rover in the year 2020. This has been specifically designed to search for traces of ancient life. In the decade following, it hopes to land astronauts on the now-barren planet, to further investigate the hunt. “The science community is making enormous progress,” said Jim Green, who is the director of planetary science at NASA. “And I’ve told my team I’m planning to be the director of planetary science when we discover life in the Solar System.” Bold statement, Jim! Better get crackin’!
