NASA’s Curiosity rover has confirmed that the red planet was home to large lakes full of water approximately 3.5 billion years ago.
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The findings, published by the journal Science, show that liquid water may have existed for long enough on the planet for life to (hypothetically) begin and thrive. But one target looms above all: putting a human on Mars.
Last week, NASA announced one of the greatest scientific discoveries: liquid water flows on Mars! The new document describes the milestones and steps necessary to get their.
Scientists have learned a bit more about the water of Mars. Chan said what scientists see in Curiosity’s images is evidence of a lake bed and a more extensive underground water network.
The Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater for the past three years. The second is sandstone and last is fine, silty rock that could be mud formed at the bottom of water. However, neither of these theories explain how water existed on the surface for such a long time. Sedimentary rocks are also a rich source of fossils and microscopic signs of life.
Rock formations photographed by the rover suggest that long ago a transient water system of deltas and lakes dominated the landscape of Gale Crater. But he adds, the lake network may have stuck around for millions of years. The accumulation of these sediments over time is known as aggradation.
“Although there is not yet definitive evidence for extraterrestrial life, the geologic results show that there were the key ingredients of water and places where water could have been accessible for microbial life to originate and evolve”.
The robot geologist explored Gale Crater, a 140-kilometer-wide impact crater, with a 5-kilometer-high mountain at its center.
So, to get the tools, technologies, and wherewithal to finally say that they are closer to sending humans to Mars than ever before is more of a testament to NASA’s progress over the years than an obvious statement. This provides ample time for life to develop, or so astrobiologists believe.
John Grotzinger, chair of the Division of Planetary and Geological Sciences at Caltech, says that the mismatch of predictions in Mars’ ancient climate model is similar to that of Earth’s past.
Sediment deposited in layers formed the foundation for Mount Sharp, the mountain which exists in the middle of the Gale Crater today.
Maps of Mars taken from orbiting spacecraft have shown that lakes once dotted the surface of the red planet. Chan wrote, “The more the geology looks like Earth, the more likely it seems that a few life-form(s) could have developed in the Martian waters”.
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The final stage, Earth Independent, is building and establishing colonies independent of Earth (probably on Mars, at first) – and interestingly, this stage could be completed as early as the 2030s. It could be that salts in the Martian soil absorb water from the planet’s thin atmosphere.
