[nonsequ]

Are the rovers too far away to drive there and check up on it? It's amazing to me that it has taken us so long to arrive at such a tentative result on the existence of water on Mars. In a weird way, I find it heartening that there are such unexplained frontiers facing humankind, places where we still grope around blindly.

[gus_massa]

The surface of Mars is approximately equal to the land surface of Earth. It’s big.

http://www.msl-chemcam.com/index.php?menu=inc&page_consult=t... - Mars 101#.UvuUrHbfMdc

We have there only ¿three? moving robots there, but IIRC one is not moving and one is not working. And there are some (maybe 10) full static platforms, but I don’t know if any of them is working now.

[cecilpl]

There are four rovers that have successfully moved around.

Sojourner stopped working in 1997, Spirit stopped working in 2010, and both Opportunity and Curiosity are still moving around.

[nollidge]

In its first year on Mars, Curiosity only travelled about 1.6 kilometers. So I imagine it'd have to be pretty damn close for them to risk driving her over there.

EDIT: source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/innovation/mars-curiosity...

[lutusp]

> It's amazing to me that it has taken us so long to arrive at such a tentative result on the existence of water on Mars.

The article is completely misleading. The presence of water on Mars is not remotely controversial -- it has been detected in a dozen different ways.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

Quote: "Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour.[1] The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] However, abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes.[3][4][5][6] More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters.[7] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[8]"

[Blahah]

You're obviously not a scientist. If you were, you'd know we're groping around blindly on all sorts of frontiers :).

[JonSkeptic]

[insert pun exerting parallel between science and teenager on a date]

Hay-o!