China's Mars rover finds signs of 'modern' water

Asia In Brief China's Zhurong rover may have succumbed to dusty solar panels, but while the robot explorer was operational it found potential evidence of water on Mars. The journal Science Advances last week published a paper detailing "Crusts, cracks, aggregates, and bright polygonal ridges on the surfaces of hydrated salt-rich dunes" visited by the rover. That's still a long way from finding water on Mars, but the paper explains "This discovery sheds light on more humid conditions of the modern Martian climate and provides critical clues to future exploration missions searching for signs of extant life, particularly at low latitudes with comparatively warmer, more amenable surface temperatures." Analyst firm IDC last week predicted China's ICT spending for developing and operating digital businesses will total over $2 trillion over the next four years. "Irrespective of the economy, enterprises will not cut investments in security, customer experience, systems integration services, workspace solutions, as well as infrastructure and IT operations optimization," said Matthew Eastwood, IDC's senior vice president, Enterprise Infrastructure and Datacenter Research. "We are in a period of transformation from multiplied innovation to intelligent automation, with future digital infrastructure deployments becoming more fragmented and enterprises partnering more with multiple public cloud providers as cloud becomes an operational model," Eastwood added. Our regional coverage from last week included news that the US Department of Homeland Security plans a 90-day sprint to assess threats posed by China.