[포착] Billions of years ago, waves hit Mars?… decisive photo release

Could life exist on Mars?

To answer this question, while NASA has been immersed in finding traces of water, an essential survival requirement for life for years, the Mars exploration rover ‘Curiosity’ recently found another conclusive evidence that water flowed on Mars in the past. .

Recently, NASA announced that it had discovered the traces of ripples created by waves on the lake billions of years ago, and attached pictures as evidence.

▲ Traces of an ancient lake discovered on Mars by the rover ‘Curiosity’.

In the published photos, the traces of ripples are clearly visible, as if the soil that had been precipitated on the floor was swept away by the waves and dried up.

This picture was taken from the point where the Mars exploration rover Curiosity climbed about 0.8 km while exploring Mars’ Mount Sharp, which is about 4.8 km (about 3 miles) high, from September 2014.

Since Mount Sharp is a sedimentary layer accumulated over a long period of time, it became an object of rover exploration to trace the process of whether Mars, which had a lot of water similar to Earth billions of years ago, changed to a cold and dry state like today.

Curiosity has already found traces of undulating rock layers as evidence of an ancient lake, but the discovery is getting more attention because experts expected no more evidence to come.

Experts analyzed the findings of this discovery, saying, “Billions of years ago, a shallow lake existed on Mars, and waves on the surface of this lake stirred up the sediment at the bottom of the lake, carving ripples into the rock surface over time.”

“These ripples are the most conclusive evidence to prove that there were lakes and water flowed on ancient Mars,” said NASA’s Curiosity Project Scientist Professor Ashwin Barsavada. “I didn’t see any evidence of this, but I found it where I expected it to be dry land.”

Curiosity attempted to sample the rock layer, but the rock was said to be too hard and failed.

However, we plan to make an additional attempt this time as we have taken samples by finding soft parts after three attempts in other places.

Meanwhile, the Mars exploration rover Curiosity has been exploring Mars for more than 10 years since landing on Mars in 2012, finding various traces of water.

Last year, in a valley called ‘Geddys Valley’, traces of sedimentary layers formed by the flow of rocks and pebbles due to landslides caused by water were discovered, followed by wave-patterned rocks in a rock layer called ‘Marker Band’ at the foot of Mount Sharp.

▲ Landslide debris on the valley ridge of ‘Geddis Valley’ captured from a distance by the rover ‘Curiosity’.

▲ Wave-patterned rocks found in the ‘Marker Band’ by the rover ‘Curiosity’.

(Photo = Provided by NASA)

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