Enlarge / Orbital picture of the Utopia Planitia area of Mars. (credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)
Most of Mars seems to be an countless expanse of alien desert, with no river or lake in sight. Nonetheless, liquid water positively existed within the planet’s distant previous. A brand new paper has additionally prompt that it is also attainable small portions of water nonetheless may exist in locations that in any other case seem barren.
Earlier than China’s Zhurong (also referred to as Phoenix) rover went into hibernation mode final Could, researchers from the Nationwide Astronomical Observatories and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences found one thing surprising. Zhurong was exploring the Utopia Planitia area, which is close to the planet’s equator. No liquid water was thought to exist at these latitudes. But when the rover beamed again knowledge from its Multispectral Digicam (MSCam), Navigation and Terrain Digicam (NaTeCam), and Mars Floor Composition Detector (MarSCoDe), there was attainable proof for liquid water having been current lower than half one million years in the past.
“[Our findings] recommend [features] related to the exercise of saline water, indicating the existence of water course of on the low-latitude area of Mars,” the researchers mentioned in a research lately revealed in Science Advances.
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