Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Reveals Locations of Ancient Lakes and Rivers
“The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars’ water was, and how diverse the wet environments were,” said Scott Murchie, CRISM principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
A July 17th study in NATURE has revealed vast regions in the Martian ancient highlands containing clay minerals, forming only in a water presence. An area that covers half a planet, it has been buried by volcanic lavas during drier periods on Mars, revealed by impact craters at later periods of the red planet’s history.
Two studies based on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the planet revealed previous large areas of lakes, flowing rivers and several other wet environments which had the potential to support some form of life. Images taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) supported this new data, along with other orbiter instruments.
Data supports the presence of phyllosilicates, a claylike mineral which preserves a record of water with rocks. On Mars, this is from an area called the Noachian period approximately 3.8-4.6 million years ago, corresponding to the earliest years of the solar system—a period when the Earth, the Moon, and mars were hit by comets and asteroids. Destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics, preserved on the Moon because of lack of liquid water, the phyllosilicates rocks on Mars were able to preserve a “unique record” of liquid water environments that is considered suitable for life in this early solar system.
“The minerals present in Mars’ ancient crust show a variety of wet environments,” said John Mustard, a member of the CRISM team from Brown University, and lead author of the Nature study. “In most locations the rocks are lightly altered by liquid water, but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil. This is really exciting because we’re finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life.”
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