NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) found on Wednesday that water on the red planet is flowing for longer than previously thought.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) found Wednesday that water has been flowing on the red planet longer than previously thought. According to a blog post, MRO determined that water left salt minerals on the surface of Mars 2 billion years ago. NASA said the detection of the salinity signature was the first mineral evidence of the presence of liquid water in this desolate world.
It was previously thought that Mars’ water evaporated about 3 billion years ago. However, according to the blog, two scientists who have studied MRO data over the past 15 years have found evidence of a significantly shorter timeline. Their research revealed signs of liquid water on the Red Planet between 2 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, meaning it took the water to get there about a billion years longer than previously estimated.
“It’s amazing that, more than a decade after providing high-resolution imagery, stereo and infrared data, MRO has driven new discoveries about the nature and timing of these ancient salt ponds connected to the river,” said Ehlmann, CRISM’s vice-chancellor of investigators in a statement.
The research center’s findings found deposits of chloride salts left behind when icy meltwater flowing across the landscape evaporates. The salt deposits provide the first mineral evidence for the existence of liquid water, scientists say. Now, the discovery raises new questions about how long microbial life could have survived if it ever formed on Mars.
“The more planets we map, the better we understand”
The research was conducted by Ellen Leakk as part of her Ph.D. work at Caltech. According to the blog, Leakk used data from an MRO instrument called the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) to map chloride salts in the clay-rich highlands of Mars’ southern hemisphere terrain, which were pitted by impact craters. These craters are one of the keys to determining salt age, she explained: The fewer craters a terrain has, the younger it is. By counting the number of craters in an area of the surface, researchers can estimate its age.
Scientists have found that much of the salt was once located in the depressions of shallow pools on gently sloping volcanic plains. In addition, they found meandering dry channels near former streams that once fed surface runoff (from occasional melting ice or permafrost) into these ponds.
“Part of the value of MRO is that over time, we get an increasingly detailed view of Earth,” said Leslie Tamppari, the mission’s JPL associate project scientist. “The more we map the Earth with instruments, the better we can learn about its history.”
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