"The suspicion [is] that there is still water on Mars. We certainly have measurements of ice," Meyer said on Thursday. "The habitable place on Mars today might be in the subsurface where liquid water is still a reasonable presumption."
Meyer and other NASA scientists were discussing during the press conference the first six months of data returned by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN).
"The single question we're really trying to get at is, did the Mars climate change…by loss to space or by some other process?" lead MAVEN researcher Bruce Jakosky said.
MAVEN spacecraft documented a solar storm stripping away the planet's atmosphere, according to a report published by Science on Thursday.
On October 28, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated that US President Barack Obama remains committed to a 2030 manned mission to Mars. In a preparatory mission for the manned Mars landing, NASA plans to send an unmanned module in 2020, Bolden added.
