A study, that used data from rover Curiosity, has revealed that Mars ever had a very similar climate southwest of Iceland.
We recommend you: NASA seeks to record sounds of Mars during ‘Perseverance’ rover landing
An ancient crater of Mars is the focus of a study that compares Curiosity data with places on Earth where similar geological formations have experienced weathering in different climates.
Iceland’s basaltic terrain and cool climate, with temperatures typically below 3 degrees Celsius, turned out to be the closest analog to ancient Mars. The study determines that temperature had the greatest impact on how rocks formed from sediments deposited by ancient Martian currents were eroded by climate.
A sedimentary plain fed by an Icelandic river, it looks like what may have fed the Gale crater on Mars more than 3 billion years ago (Image: Michael Thorpe via Rice)
–
The study set out to answer questions about the forces that affected sand and mud in the ancient Martian lake bed.
Data collected by Curiosity during its travels since it landed on Mars (in 2012) provide details on the chemical and physical states of the shale formed in an ancient lake, but the chemistry does not directly reveal the climatic conditions when the sediment eroded upstream. . For that, the researchers had to search for similar rocks and soils on Earth to find a correlation between the planets.
The study published in JGR Planets takes data from well-known and variable conditions in Iceland, and around the world, to see which one provides the best match with what the rover sees and detects in the crater encompassing Mount Sharp.
The researchers were surprised that there was so little rock erosion on Mars after more than 3 billion years, so that the ancient rocks of Mars were comparable to the Icelandic sediments of a river and lake today.
The researchers directly studied Icelandic sediments, and compiled studies of similar basaltic sediments from a variety of climates around the world, from Australia to Hawaii, to mark the climatic conditions they thought were possible on Mars when water flowed into the crater. Gale.
The results also indicated that the climate changed over time from Antarctic-like conditions to become more like Iceland’s, while river processes continued to deposit sediment in the crater. This change shows that the technique can be used to help track climate change on ancient Mars.
With information from JGR Planets
– .
