Scientists have discovered that the surface of Mars was at one time awash with water, suitable for sustaining life.
Image: Colour-enhanced image of the delta in Jezero Crater, which once held a lake. Researchers report that ancient rivers ferried clay-like minerals (shown in green) into the lake, forming the delta. Credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/MSSS/Brown University
Basing their analysis on data received from NASA's 'other' Mars spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers say they have found evidence of vast lakes, rivers and other wet locations, all of which hold the tantalising possibility that the environments could have once been ideal habitats for microbes.
A key study, published in Nature magazine, shows vast regions of the ancient highlands of the red planet contain clay minerals, which can only be formed in the presence of water.
"There was apparently pervasive water present during the first 600 to 700 million years," said Brown University geologist John Mustard, co-author of the Nature paper.
The team analysed images taken by the Orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, which works by reading over 500 colours in reflected sunlight to detect the minerals on the planet's surface. The high spatial and spectral resolutions are better than any previous spectrometer sent to Mars and reveal variations in the types and composition of the clay minerals.
"The minerals present in Mars' ancient crust show a variety of wet environments," said Mustard. "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."
According to Bethany Ehlmann, another member of the CRISM team from Brown University: "The distribution of clays inside the ancient lake bed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years... 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."
As NASA's current Mars Phoenix Lander is currently digging for signs of life on Mars, the space agency has announced it intends to send a robotic rover, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), to the planet in September 2009 in order to help continue the search.
The European Space Agency (ESA) will also send a rover, called ExoMars, to investigate habitability by 2013.
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CronosJul 21st, 2008 - 05:26:53
Mars either has life, fossils, or other traces of life. Christians, you guys are wrong, sorry.
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CronosJul 21st, 2008 - 05:26:53
Mars either has life, fossils, or other traces of life. Christians, you guys are wrong, sorry.
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