But they may prove to be sites of present day, near surface, liquid water , holding out the tantalizing possibility of martian life . Too small to have been seen by past Mars orbiters, these disconcerting landforms were found in only about 250 out of more than 20,000 high resolution images from the operating Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The gullies in the three kilometer wide area pictured above are in the south facing wall of a crater in southern Noachis Terra . Unblemished by craters and overlaying young surface features, these and other gullies are inescapably young themselves. In fact, future monitoring of the martian gullies for changes could demonstrate whether the flows that formed them are still active today.
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