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Images Suggest Water Once Covered Mars
Reuters
WASHINGTON (July 16) - Minerals in the soil of Mars show it
was covered once by lakes, rivers and other bodies of water
that could have supported life, U.S. researchers reported on
Wednesday.
Was the Red Planet Once the Wet Planet?
G.Neukum, ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / ReutersMars once was covered by lakes, flowing rivers and other wet environments that had the potential to support life, researchers said Wednesday. Above, Echus Chasma is one of the largest water source regions on the Red Planet.
1 of 6PHOTOS
Last month the Mars Phoenix Lander found ice on the surface
of the planet, but it is frozen hard and covered by red dust.
Writing in the journal Nature, a team of scientists shows that
the ice is left over from warmer, wetter times.
"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," said
John Mustard of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island,
who worked on the study.
"The minerals present in Mars' ancient crust show a variety
of wet environments," Mustard said.
His team used the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging
Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and other instruments on board
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to look at colors in
reflected sunlight. This helps determine what minerals are
there.
"Water must have been creating minerals at depth to get the
signatures we see," Mustard said in a statement.
Examining Mars
NASA / AP NASA scientists said Thursday they had definitive proof that water exists on Mars after further tests on ice found on the planet in June by the Phoenix Mars Lander. "We have water," said scientist William Boynton. Here, the lander's Robotic Arm scoop reaches for a soil sample on July 14.
1 of 12PHOTOS
The clay minerals would have to have been formed at low
temperatures, the researchers said.
"What does this mean for habitability? It's very strong,"
Mustard said. "It wasn't this hot, boiling cauldron. It was a
benign, water-rich environment for a long period of time."
The findings fit with the analysis from the Phoenix Mars
Lander mission, which, besides ice, found alkaline soil that
could have supported life.
"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's principal
investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, suggest
water interacted with rocks dating back to what is called the
Noachian period on Mars, about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years
ago.
"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," Mustard said.
Another study, published in Nature Geosciences, found that
the wet conditions persisted for a long time. It found evidence
of river channels forming a delta where the river emptied into
a crater lake.
"The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows
that standing water must have persisted for thousands of
years," said Brown University's Bethany Ehlmann.
"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."
Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by Julie Steenhuysen and
Vicki Allen.
Copyright 2008, Reuters
2008-07-16 18:36:18
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