This is good news from the european space probes. So when will we actually move onto something more interesting than finding water.

Good! Two strong wet[water ice?] areas where one
of a new prototype future rover should be sent
to determine human habitability. However I must
tell Americans that Mars Express technology to search for water shuuld have been on our unmanned orbiters years ago. JPL will probably say that
the two orbiters have similar technology, and that
Mars Express is only comfirming findings from
the Orbiters. Then we should start planning for
landing at such two sites to determine future human habitability, not for geological data.

John C Redfern

Water vapor over Arabia Terra and Tharsis Uplift region might facilitate cloud formation with the valley.

The density of space hydrogen in the vicinity of Mars is about 1 atom per CC. While this is almost none, the high velocity of Mars through space, and hundreds of millions, or even billions, of years would cause a substantial "wind" to blow across Mars (with the "wind" concentrated by the size of Mars). This should cause water vapor to be swept behind Mars as a "tail" of relatively warm ice crystals, and the mixing effect should cause the formation of "snowballs", which over time, with low mass compared to surface area, would form a decaying orbit that would take them to Earth. This seems like a much more likely scenario than Solar storms, and would explain why the relatively dry infant Earth picked up so much water as it aged.

Any comments?