were true: After much speculation, NASA that there are signs of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, came from Georgia Institute of Technology doctoral candidate Lujendra Ojha and information from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been collecting Martian data since 2011.

The tools aboard the spacecraft spotted evidence of seasonal streaks on the planet's surface, which have been identified as a type of salt known as perchlorates. These streaks, first identified by Ojha in 2011 while he studied at the University of Arizona, serve as the strongest evidence yet of salty flowing liquid water on the Red Planet.

“Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that recurring slope lineae form as a result of contemporary water activity on Mars,” Ojha wrote in the paper abstract.

“That’s a direct detection of water in the form of hydration of salts,” Alfred S. McEwen, of the University of Arizona and one of the principal investigators, told the New York Times. “There pretty much has to have been liquid water recently present to produce the hydrated salt.”

Researchers have long known about water stored in Mars' polar ice caps. In March, that Mars may have once held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean, a “vast water supply” covering 19 percent of the planet's surface. The water was over time lost to the atmosphere.

“With Mars losing that much water, the planet was very likely wet for a longer period of time than was previously thought, suggesting it might have been habitable for longer,” said Michael Mumma, a senior NASA scientist, said at the time of this release.

The new paper will likely further fuel speculation of the Red Planet's past — or present — ability to foster life. The full paper, “Spectral evidence for hydrated salts in recurring slope lineae on Mars,” is available in Nature Geoscience.

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