Almost a decade later, the spacecraft is still going strong in Mars orbit, searching for signs of past water activity, scouting out sites for future robotic and human missions and helping relay data from NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers back to Earth. The mission aims to unlock the secret to the formation and development of terrestrial planets that mostly occurred during the past 4.5 billion years.
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Scientists suspected that after the oceans evaporated, that was it for water – and life – on Mars. The study was published earlier this month in the journal Geology. Researchers estimate that the volcanic planes were created 3.6 billion years ago, so the channels from the lake bed must have formed after.
This image released August 27, 2003 captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 34,648,840 miles (55,760,220 km) away.
Researchers involved in the project noted that Meridiani Planum is one of the youngest lakes on Mars and thus it should possibly carry in its remains some reliable evidence that water as well as life had once existed on Red Planet. “
There was life on Earth when this lake was active so by that analogy, we can say there’s potential that Mars had microbial life and this was a great place where it could have resided”,
he adds.
“Just like on Earth, when salts are left someplace, that in all probability signifies that water was there”. “So, these are indicators that water was there in some form”. They found evidence to suggest that at one point, the lake grew large enough to spill over the rim of the basin, carving channels in its wake.
The channels also offer insight into the lakebed’s age.
Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are similar to the salt deposits on Mars. Furthermore, opportunity is not outfitted with the right tools to detect life. And “InSight” refers to NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which will touch down in September 2016 to probe the Red Planet’s internal structure. Hynek also proposes to study the salt deposits. “If there was life, here’s a spot that it could have existed”. The lake’s salinity, acidity, oxygen levels, and available nutrients for food are all important. An advantage of such deposits is that the salt can contain fossilized microbial life. However, the other three factors are hard to measure without sending a rover there to scoop up the soil and analyze what’s in it. The liquid-water lake probably dried up about 3.6 billion years ago, indicating that Mars had bodies of water for longer than previously recognized.
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According to NASA, the orbiter’s work is far from over as it is now playing a key role in the space agency’s Journey to Mars planning.
