Part II-Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Reveals Locations of Ancient Lakes and Rivers
“The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years,” says Bethany Ehlmann, another member of the CRISM team from Brown. Ehlmann is lead author of the study of an ancient lake within a northern-Mars impact basin called Jezero Crater. “Clays are wonderful at trapping and preserving organic matter, so if life ever existed in this region, there’s a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta.”
In addition to the July 17th study in NATURE, a study on June 2 in NATURE GEOSCIENCES has found that these wet conditions on Mars has been around for a long time with thousands to millions of years after the clays formed, a system of river channels had eroded them out of the highlands, according to the study. This was then concentrated into a delta where the river emptied into a crater lake about 25-miles in diameter.
It is surmised that the clay distribution inside this ancient lake bed is showing that standing water persisted for thousands of year, according to Bethany Ehlmann, a member of the CRISM team from Brown and lead author of the study of Jezero Crater’s ancient lake. Ehlmann feels that because clay traps and preserves organic matter, the chemistry of life is preserved in the delta.
The CRISM data and the orbiter’s Context Image and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, it has been identified that three principal classes of water-related minerals dating back to the early Noachian period are present, with mineral variations suggesting different types of watery environments are responsible for their creation:
• Aluminum-phyllosilicates
• Hydrated Silica or opal
• Iron/magnesium-phyllosilicates
• The abundance of phyllosilicates shows that water played a sizable role in changing the minerals of a variety of terrains in the planet’s early history.
“Our whole team is turning our findings into a list of sites where future missions could land to look for organic chemistry and perhaps determine whether life ever existed on Mars,” said Murchie.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Applied Physics Laboratory operates the CRISM instrument in coordination with an international team of researchers from universities, government and the private sector.
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