NASA has discovered evidence that water flowed on Mars for around a billion years longer than previously thought.
According to new findings from the US space agency, liquid water existed on Mars as recently as 2 billion to 2.5 billion years ago.
Previously, it was estimated that 3 billion years ago, Mars was rippled with rivers and ponds.
That water evaporated when the planet’s atmosphere diminished over time, leaving behind a frozen desert. Between 30 and 99 percent of the water that was formerly present on Mars still stays trapped within minerals.
The diameter of Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, is approximately 4,220 miles (6,791 kilometers). The Earth’s diameter is around 7,926 miles (12,755 km).
Mars was “warm and humid enough to support a hydrologic cycle”
The Jezero crater on Mars was the site of an ancient river, according to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It has aided the search for indications of life on Mars.
Amy Williams is a NASA astrobiologist in Florida. She discovered parallels between cliff features observed from the crater floor and patterns in Earth’s river deltas.
Early on, the form of the bottom three layers indicated the existence of water and a constant flow. Thereby, indicating Mars was “warm and humid enough to support a hydrologic cycle.”
Boulders larger than a meter in diameter spread throughout the top and most recent layers. They most likely got there by intense flooding.
However, it is the fine-grained silt of the base layer that will most likely be sampled for traces of long-extinct life on Mars, if it ever existed.
Scientists Ellen Leask and Bethany Ehlmann discovered salts in depressions on gently sloping volcanic plains that were originally home to shallow ponds.
“What is amazing is that after more than a decade of providing high-resolution image, stereo, and infrared data, MRO has driven new discoveries about the nature and timing of these river-connected ancient salt ponds,” said Ehlmann.
“Part of the value of MRO is that our view of the planet keeps getting more detailed over time,” said Leslie Tamppari, the mission’s deputy project scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
“The more of the planet we map with our instruments, the better we can understand its history.”