This is shaping up to be a big week for the planet Mars.

On Friday, the new movie The Martian opens in theaters, and it’s already generating some positive buzz for its depiction of a near-future NASA rescue mission to the red planet. But the real-life version of the agency made big news this week with the announcement that it found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Two Georgia Tech grad students had starring roles in that announcement.

GPB’s Bradley George and Renay San Miguel talk about the week in Mars.

·Conspiracy theorists might say that NASA timed its news conference to coincide with the release of a movie where the agency itself plays a prominent role. Is that the case, or is this just a lucky break?

Whoever has the media relations contract for the planet Mars deserves a big raise. Yahoo News actually asked a NASA spokesperson about the timing and she said it was really centered on the Monday, September 28 publication of a scientific paper in Nature Geoscience about the findings. But that certainly didn’t stop 20th Century Fox, the studio behind The Martian, to release some creative tweets tying the news to its story about a NASA astronaut named Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) stranded on Mars. The tagline for the movie posters is “Bring Him Home,” and Fox changed it to “Bring Watney A Straw.” There’s also a video showing a NASA scientist saying we found evidence of liquid water on Mars, and then a scene from the movie where Damon looks at the camera and says, “Surprise!” So double-bonus points to Fox for its creative marketing and use of Twitter.

·That report in Nature Geoscience actually shows off the work of the two Georgia Tech researchers, and they were featured in Monday’s NASA press conference.

Lujendra Ojha first noticed these strange streaks on the slopes of Martian mountains in 2010, when he was an undergrad student at the University of Arizona, and he was studying photos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the planet since 2006. Those streaks would grow and darken during the Martian summer and shorten and lighten in winter. Soon a theory formed that it was liquid water causing those streaks. He’s now working on his doctorate at Georgia Tech but all this time he kept looking for evidence using the advanced instruments on the Orbiter, and Mary Beth Wilhelm, another doctoral candidate at Tech who also works at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, joined that search. The more those instruments gathered data, the more evidence built that the streaks contained chemicals called percholates, kind of a cocktail of different minerals that could keep the water from freezing in the Martian winter. They finally had enough evidence to publish the findings and join in Monday’s NASA news conference.

·So it’s liquid water but it’s certainly not drinkable. What does NASA say about the possibility that it could lead to evidence of past or current life on Mars?

NASA still doesn’t know where the water comes from, whether there are underground aquifers or if it’s tied to the planet’s humidity, of which there’s a lot more of than previously thought thanks to the evidence uncovered by the Mars Rovers. The presence of water can be tied to the possible presence of some kind of life form, usually microbial in nature, but NASA stressed in the news conference that this findings is revolutionizing – their word – their understanding of the planet and how it will impact their research going forward.

· And what other missions are on the launch pad for Mars? And how does this news impact a potential manned mission to the planet?

There’s actually several robotic missions coming up. NASA’s Insight Lander launches next year, and it will have earthquake and heat flow sensors to study Mars’ interior. Also in 2016, the European Space Agency will launch an orbiter and lander. In 2018 the ESA will launch a lander with a drill that can go deep to look for any organic materials. NASA’s next big Mars Rover mission launches in 2020. It’s the sequel to Curiosity and will be all about astrobiology. When it comes to water on Mars and how astronauts could use it, remember that water is hydrogen and oxygen.

Tags: Mars, NASA