Large Deposit Of Hidden Water Discovered On Mars
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Researchers have long suspected that Mars was once home to several rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans. But while they have been able to detect ice, and some salty lakes, in the planet's polar regions, finding water in other areas has proved elusive. Now, scientists have finally found evidence of a large water reservoir just a few feet below the surface of the Red Planet's Valles Marineris canyon system.
Located along the equator of Mars, the Valles Marineris is one of the Solar System's largest canyons. The massive tectonic chasm measures over 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) long and 5 miles (8 km) deep. NASA estimates that if the Valles Marineris were on Earth, it would stretch across the continental United States — all the way from New York to California.
"We found a central part of Valles Marineris to be packed full of water — far more water than we expected," said study co-author Alexey Malakhov, a scientist at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "This is very much like Earth's permafrost regions, where water ice permanently persists under dry soil because of the constant low temperatures."
The discovery was made using data collected by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which has been circling the Red Planet since 2018. TGO, a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), is designed to detect the presence of gases such as methane and water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. The researchers say that between May 2018 to February 2021, the orbiter's Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) found an unusually large amount of hydrogen — a measure of water content – in the '
The scientists, who revealed their findings in a press statement on December 15, 2021, suspect the water is in the form of ice. If true, it could make up as much as 40 percent of the area's near-surface material. However, FREND could also be detecting water that is chemically bound to minerals in the soil. The team plans to analyze more data to determine the water's form. Regardless of the outcome, they believe the discovery is a game-changer for potential human missions to the Red Planet.
"Knowing more about how and where water exists on present-day Mars is essential to understand what happened to Mars' once-abundant water, and helps our search for habitable environments, possible signs of past life, and organic materials from Mars' earliest days," says Colin Wilson, ESA's TGO project scientist.
Resources: www.esa.in, Live Science.com
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177 Comments
beanskiover 2 yearsThat's literally the coolest thing EVER!!!
jeraldatebobover 2 yearsboy human prob gonna live in mars at 2070 to 2120
jenny0823over 2 yearsI wish we could go to Mars one day!
voteover 2 yearsI want to run the first manned mission to mars.- prr1499over 2 yearsvery cool, clears the way to setup camp on Mars
pinecone92810over 2 yearsThat is SO cool. Maybe we have a chance in the near future to live on Mars. That would be cool.
spacenerd12over 2 yearsbecause of its liquid outer core failure, mars cannot be terraformed by time, but only by us. and if we do terraform it, it would take 1,000 years.
techfashion0315over 2 yearsThat is so cool!
loxover 2 yearsI am so glad that they found water because Mars because it could be our planet some day
mymy312over 2 yearsit could be or planet some day and we would have 2 planets to live on!!!!!!!
royal_blueover 2 yearsIt would be really cool if we were able to live on Mars!!
mlg800over 2 yearsWell that is amazing but what if there was ice age on mars and it just froze most of the water and then after a while it got so hot all most the water was evaporated.- spacenerd12over 2 yearsmars seems hot, but it is the coldest rocky planet in our solar system! so its not hot, just the sun stripped its atmosphere with radiation when the outer core hardened millions of years ago. its very cold, a cold snap there is -345% Fahrenheit!
- tacotacotaceesover 2 yearsbecause mars dosnt have clouds *facepalm*
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