海角大神

Don鈥檛 expect Mars rover Curiosity to capture any selfies splashing around in the Red Planet鈥檚 newly-discovered liquid water just yet.

In fact, NASA鈥檚 rover would likely have never found flowing water on Mars, a breakthrough discovery made using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and聽announced by NASA on Monday.

Why? Curiosity is physically incapable of reaching the steep terrain where this water was found, according to CNET.

But more importantly, the Outer Space Treaty, a 1967 United Nations document which sets the rules for space exploration, requires such exploration to eschew interplanetary contamination by Earth life 鈥� that means no human or robot can get near any water source.

As Quartz鈥檚 Akshat Rathi reported, it is extremely difficult to avoid this.

Rathi added that there is an abundance of regions designated as no-go zones, including 鈥渁reas that are warm or wet enough to support Martian life ... Polar ice caps, caves, and regions with volcanic activity are such special regions. Even regions where ice is found as deep as five meters below the surface are on the list.鈥�

This presents a major barrier for on-the-ground exploration moving forward, and could lead to disagreement among the scientific community over how to collect more research. As the Guardian鈥檚 Ian Sample reported, NASA now faces a dilemma over Curiosity鈥檚 role in analyzing the water sources.

But the Guardian also noted that Curiosity could still analyze the water flows from a distance, though a second, more controversial direction would be to "find a flat region at the bottom of one of the flows, and scoop up some Martian soil for analysis."

In March, NASA published research showing the Red Planet used to have an ocean covering nearly half of the planet鈥檚 northern hemisphere. It would have held more water than Earth鈥檚 Arctic Ocean and, in some places, would have been deeper than a mile.

And last week, 海角大神 reported on NASA鈥檚 plans for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. It remains to be seen whether astronauts would be able to utilize the water found on the Red Planet.