Major Mars Announcement by NASA and JPL Set for Monday

NASA and Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are set to make a major announcement Monday at a press conference headlined “Mars Mystery Solved.”

No one has revealed any details about the announcement, although the space agency has said it will be detailing a “major science finding” at the press event.

The news briefing is scheduled at 8:30 a.m. PDT and will be held at the James Webb Auditorium at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

JPL published a list of the participants at the news conference including Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters; Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters; Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta; Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The inclusion of Ojha among the experts speaking at the press conference has led several major media outlets and science journalist to speculate that the major announcement may have something to do with water on Mars.

Ojha, a science fiction fan and Nepal native, made major headlines in 2011 when he co-authored a study that suggested liquid water was flowing on Mars. He was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona when he took interest in images taken of Mars, and came to the conclusion that many of the images showed signs of flowing water during warm months on the planet.

One of the other speakers, McEwen, worked with Ojha in processing and studying the images of Mars taken by fellow researcher Colin Dundas.

Wilhelm, meanwhile, is another Georgia Tech graduate student who is believed to have been working with Ojha on the flowing water research at the university.

If NASA has indeed found evidence of liquid water on Mars, this could further lead to enlightenment on the belief that life may have existed, or may yet come into existence, on the planet.

The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA television and on JPL’s Ustream channel, www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL.
Members of the public can ask questions during the briefing using #AskNASA.