A paper published on October 9, 2015 in the journal Science provides more evidence that Mars used to be a home of ancient bodies of water. So, NASA’s latest discovery that water may flow on the red planet Mars, at least in the warmer months of summer, is indeed a major and exciting discovery.
Advertisement
But this week’s announcement is different.
NASA has sent a host of orbiters, probes and landers to Mars, advancing its robotic capabilities and understanding of the Red Planet.
This mismatch between the predictions of Mars’s ancient climate that arise from models developed by paleoclimatologists and indications of the planet’s watery past, as interpreted by geologists, bears similarities to a century-old scientific conundrum-in this case, about Earth’s ancient past.
On October 8, NASA released information confirming that there were once lakes on Mars, specifically in the Gale Crater.
“On Earth, wherever we have water, we’ve got life”, said Marjorie Chan, a sedimentologist at the University of Utah.
“We have tended to think of Mars as being simple”. How do we explain their existence? Their Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with one of these new technologies – a machine that can turn the carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere into oxygen. Water eroded the gravel and sand from the surface of the planet and carried it down into the center of the crater in tiny streams.
But NASA isn’t stepping away from the goal of a manned mission, and it sees three phases on the path to achieving it. The first phase, where we are now, is described by NASA as “Earth Reliant”. The second was sandstone and the third was a fine, silty rock that may have once been mud formed at the bottom of standing water.
What’s our best guess as to what Mars looked like 3.5 billion years ago?
Scientists have learned a bit more about the water of Mars.
NASA has revealed it is aiming to set up a human colony on Mars by 2030. But he adds, the lake network may have stuck around for millions of years.
Nobody quite knows why Mars dried out. But it didn’t last.
The problem: Back then, the Sun was up to 30 percent weaker than it is today, so Mars wasn’t getting almost as much solar heat.
The space agency said it is focused on refining the necessary architectural pieces for the planned mission to Mars, which will define NASA’s efforts over the next two decades. Given that, “why wouldn’t life have gotten started on Mars?” But the source of the water is not yet known. Most of these places have been underground on icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
A Martian crater now being explored by the Nasa rover Curiosity once contained lakes that remained for up to 10,000 years at a time – long enough to support life. We are driven by the ultimate question of whether life ever took hold, but that is a very challenging question to answer.
Advertisement
NASA believes that the atmosphere and temperature in Mars resembles that of Earth, based on data retrieved by the Curiosity rover.
