Okay, the real news is that reports about a study by John Mustard, published in the July 17 issue of Nature show that Mars held water, and held it for a long time.
The study uses data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They found the presence of phyllosilicates (read: "clay"), which can only form in the presence of water. Their distribution shows "a variety of wet environments," says Mustard.
It gets exciting when you include the companion study, published in the June 2 issue of Nature Geosciences, which shows that the clay concentrated in a crater lake. The concentration suggests that flowing water on Mars carried the clay into the lakebed, and its distribution suggests that the standing water "persisted for thousands of years."
Clay traps organic matter. If there was life on Mars, it's possible that we'll find a record of it.
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