NASA's Journey To Mars Possible by 2030? Discovery of Liquid Water Boosts Space Exploration Hopes!

The National Aeronautics Space Administration has set its eyes on sending humans to Mars in the 2030s, according to a brief from NASA. The recent discovery of flowing water in the surface of the planet has also invigorated the public's interest on the project.

NASA has recently ramped up its space exploration projects, hoping that in a couple of decades, humans will be able to travel to nearby planets like Mars. One of their most successful exploratory projects is the unmanned NASA journey to Mars, when they were able to land the Curiousity rover on the surface of the "Red Planet." Since then, the unmanned vehicle had taken plenty of images of the planet's surface, as well as analyzed rock and soil samples, as documented by Space.com.

The latest discovery about the planet is the presence of flowing water, confirmed by NASA in a press release. The presence of water increases the chances of finding signs of life outside Earth, even if it is on a microscopic level.

The findings were from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which takes high-resolution images of the planet's surface. Researchers were able to identify signs of hydrated minerals on slopes. The slopes appear to darken during warm seasons, and gone by colder seasons.

With the evidence of flowing water in the surface, NASA has pinned its hopes on following up on it to search for life on the planet. This will also help determine if it can sustain human life, which is a big step to furthering manned space explorations.

Aside from other landing the Curiosity Rover and discovering the presence of water on Mars, NASA also had other recent successes. New Horizons, an unmanned spacecraft created and launched to explore the edges of the solar system, recently made a fly-by with Pluto. Pluto was re-declared as a planet, and everyone got a glimpse of actual images of the planet, taken by the passing New Horizons.