Where did this error start?

The first spacecraft to send images of Mars back to Earth was Mariner 4 in 1965.  It sent back grainy but recognizable images of the planet's surface.  In some of the pictures, craters could be seen.  Here is the first image that clearly showed craters on Mars.

This image can be seen on the Mariner 4 home page at this link.  The Mariner 4 mission page is here.  Now, it is important to note that until this time, it was often thought that Mars might have water and even a fairly clement environment.  However, this mission seemed to show a dry world, and the following mission (Mariner 9) showed even more craters and features.  The presence of dust storms also led people to believe that Mars was dry, but as I will show, this is not a valid argument.

Mariners 6 and 7 sent back more images, but these three first missions were fly-by missions only and had precious few moments to get images and take readings.  Much of the surface of the planet remained unseen and unknown until Mariner 9.  Still, the images coming back showed craters and from those images it was assumed that Mars was similar to our Moon.  Keep in mind that no device that could measure the presence of water was available and so the opinion of somebody who saw the pictures was the only reason for claiming that Mars had little or no water.  Mariner 9, arriving in orbit around Mars, found a giant dust storm covering the planet and was unable to get any useful images for months. Once it did start sending images back at the beginning of 1972, it showed the most remarkable terrain including volcanoes, canyons, plains, and of course craters.  By this time, however, it was stated that Mars was a dry world and must have been for billions of years.  Some Mariner 9 images can be seen here.  NASA's Mariner 9 home page is located here.

Mariner 9 sent back some images showing the polar caps and the ice present, but it was believed to be mostly carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) and have very little water.  This was because of the assumption that the planet was dry.  But there were also images of clouds sent back and it was assumed that these were only ice crystal clouds, and not expected to contain any liquid water.

First evidence to the contrary

In 1975, two Viking landers were launched to Mars.  They would land in Chryse Planitia and Utopia Planitia- two different portions of the Martian globe.  Viking 1 landed in "fluffy" soil and one foot pad sank about 5 inches into the material and was completely covered by it.  It was noted that the soil was "weakly cohesive" at that time, meaning that it stuck together slightly.  It was compared to lunar soil in how it acted.  Here is a page showing the information.  However, information from both Viking landers soon confirmed that the relative humidity on Mars stayed at or close to 100% all the time.

Further images showed frost and fog on some mornings.  Water vapor condensing on the rock surfaces would produce morning frost, and that same water vapor in the form of droplets formed low-lying fog on some mornings.  Coupled to that is the fact that clouds were sometimes photographed by Viking.  So we have fluffy soil (which some thought might be the result of ice crystals in the soil), clouds in the sky, fog near the ground, frost some mornings, and an atmosphere nearly saturated with water vapor.  Somehow, these pieces of data did not add up to the picture of a desiccated planet.

Second evidence to the contrary

The Hubble space telescope has often imaged the planet Mars, and what it shows us is revealing.  Clouds are a common sight about the red planet, and what is even more important is what Hubble discovered about those clouds.  Clouds that are composed of ice crystals scatter light in a random manner, but clouds that contain water droplets or mist polarize the light.  Hubble found that many of the clouds it saw polarized the light- meaning that they were not ice crystals at all, but water droplets.  In other words, although NASA states that Mars is too dry and cold to have any clouds other than ice crystals, this is wrong.  Water vapor clouds can and do exist in the Martian atmosphere.  The article that best describes the findings is POLARIZATION CLOUDS IN THE MARTIAN ATMOSPHERE: HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS. V. Kaydash, Yu. Shkuratov, M. Kreslavsky, G. Videen, M. Wolff, J. Bell.

Polar caps show specific composition

Now, further studies of the Martian polar caps reveal that the north polar cap is mostly water ice- contrary to the earlier opinion that it was mostly dry ice.  The southern cap, however, does appear to be mostly dry ice.  The reasons are related to the axial tilt of the planet.  The real news is that as we have looked closer at Mars, greater evidence of present liquid water continues to build.  The formation of clouds near the north polar cap is not coincidental- in fact, there are far more clouds in the northern hemisphere of the planet than in the southern hemisphere.  This appears to be directly related to the composition of the polar caps themselves.  But the real data comes from neutron particles and gamma rays.

Mars Odyssey and what it shows us

By scanning the planet with a gamma ray spectrometer and neutron sensors, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was able to map the location of hydrogen on the surface.  This is significant because hydrogen is most commonly associated with water.  This link shows how the spacecraft imaged the planet and what it found.  In short, the planet shows a huge reservoir of water in the soil just half a meter below the surface- this is significant because of the thin atmosphere, in a way that I will come back to.

It is no coincidence that the presence of water on Mars greatly coincides with the low-lying regions, as well as the polar caps.

The conclusion is that water is just below the surface of the soil.  The quantity of water was originally estimated to be roughly equivalent to the amount of ice in the Greenland ice sheet..  Further research using "epithermal neutrons" produced this map of water abundance on Mars.  The full text of the release is available here.  Science Daily also has a good article here on the material.  But this is just one more bit of data- there is much more.

Further material from the study showed that water ice was less than a meter below the surface, that it was present below 60 degrees south latitude, and that if all of it was melted, it would create a planet-wide ocean.  Here is an article detailing the findings.

Spirit and Opportunity catch a lot of data

Images from the surface, taken by Spirit and Opportunity, show what is clearly erosion, water features, and geysers.  Opportunity is the richest source of the data in the form of high resolution images.  My work has revealed an extensive field of geysers near Endurance Crater and even shows what appears to be the trail of actual liquid deposited within hours of the image.  This geyser from Sol 122 is clear and undisputable- wind cannot have formed this feature.  Here is an image showing a dark trail in the soil in color and stereo, imaged by Opportunity.  Look at the line in the soil- it is dark and shows individual droplets as well as the curving trail.  The material is also clearly around the spherule located in the center just below the pointed rock.

Another geyser is shown in detail from Sol 183 at this link.  A look at one of the close up geysers above Endurance Crater is here.  You can clearly see the flow patterns of mud as it washed down into the crater.  Here is a page showing the close up image of what is clearly mud on the surface of Mars, complete with water flow lines.  This page shows erosion channels just a few inches wide running alongside a rock.  These channels are significant because they could not survive more than a few months due to dust storms, dust devils, and other erosion known to be present on Mars now.  This page details photographically the differences in dry and wet soil and how the salts are absorbed back into the soil over the course of a few sols.  Moisture must be present for this to happen.

Bounce Rock itself has water cut channels around it, and it even was wet on one sol and dry on another- scroll down halfway on this page to the Bounce Rock images to see this.  Here is a link showing what Opportunity saw in terms of clouds and frost on sols 290 and 291.

NASA has this data, why do they persist in the dry Mars concept?

The most telling item is in the words of the principal investigator of the rover team.  "It looks like mud but it can't be mud," said Steven Squyres, the principal investigator for the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's very cohesive. It holds together well."  But the fact is, it IS mud.  He has been convinced that there is no water on Mars, and because of that he has automatically discarded the answer to the question, "what is this stuff?"  The rigidly enforced concept of a dry Mars has seriously flawed the ability of investigators to actually see what they are being shown by the rover cameras.

Furthermore, water has been present on Mars all along- the outer surface of the soil is quite dry due to the low atmospheric pressure and the heat of the Sun, but bare centimeters below it is very wet.  Go to any beach and you can see a similar situation.  All indications are that the soil on Mars  is loaded with brine in most cases, and with fresh water in others.  But this is another problem for the "dry Mars" mindset.  A wet Mars means that water might have been present all along, and this means that life is a definitely possibility.  For whatever reason, NASA refuses to seriously consider water, and they appear to loathe the thought that life might be present today.  But the presence of water now strongly supports a planet that could have supported life all throughout its history.

Conclusions

Even the dunes themselves seem to be loaded with water ice on Mars.  Up to half of the soil is salts in many places, and those salts contain huge amounts of water as "water of hydration", requiring only a little heat to release it.  And in Meridiani, the mud polygon floor, which stretches for many kilometers in all directions, is mostly gypsum- and that contains a large percentage of water of hydration as well.  Everywhere we look we see the water on Mars- locked up as ice, salts, and minerals, but also present in geysers and clouds and frost.

In short, even though NASA has all this data in their hands, they seem to be falling short of putting the pieces together.  Many would cry "conspiracy" because it is hard to believe that so many thousands of scientists cannot get this data into one place and see the obvious conclusions.  I would rather think that the researchers are so focused on their particular aspects of the work they are doing that they do not see the larger picture.  But it is much easier to simply ignore the evidence and try to maintain the status quo, and large organizations, particularly government operated one, are very adept at doing this.

So, we have water ice in the polar caps, a very humid atmosphere, frost, fog, water droplet clouds, geysers, ice in craters, ice in sand dunes, enough ice in the ground to create a planet-wide ocean if melted, and present day erosion channels that are clearly forming as we watch.  NASA has blinded themselves for whatever reason and refuses to see the obvious.  Mars has plenty of water today and has had it all along.