Pretty amazing. It seems that everywhere we look in the solar system, there are things to surprise us. The speaker in this video is a little hard to understand, but he said something very interesting – that the salt in the water, plus other discoveries they made, mean that there are the right chemicals for possibly creating life. Forget life on other planets – we should be looking for life on other moons!

Breaking news: yet another place in the solar system that might have liquid water… Click on the picture to learn more!

Enceladus is a moon around Saturn. We thought it was so weird that it had volcanoes that spewed ice instead of lava. Now scientists think that there might be a liquid ocean underneath that ice layer, like Europa.

Yet another place to look for aliens!

The Kepler spacecraft was launched into space last night. Its job is to take pictures of planets that orbit around other stars.

Here’s an animation:

And here’s the video of Kepler’s launch.

Water found on Mars! July 31st, 2008

What we’ve all been waiting for! Scientists have known for years that there might be water on Mars in the form of ice, but this is the first time that we have tested actual soil and found water in it. The discovery was announced yesterday, along with news that Phoenix will add five more weeks to its mission and end in September, not August.

Current thinking is that if there is no water on a planet, there cannot be life. On our planet, wherever there is water, there IS life. No one is expecting to find little green men here – we are talking about tiny bacteria or single celled life forms, not Martians with flying saucers. We’re also more likely to find evidence of PAST life than current living things.

But, we have a reason to look! Congrats to JPL and NASA for this discovery.

We spent a lot of time this year talking about whether there could be life on other planets. Now it looks like we are going to find out!