The Curiosity Rover spacecraft detects new evidence of the existence of ancient rivers on Mars, which increases the possibility of life on its surface.
Many of the craters on Mars may once have been habitable rivers
NASA/Caltech-JPL/MSSS Enlarge image Mars has received a lot of attention from scientists over the past decades, not only because it is the closest and easiest to study, but also because of evidence that its surface contained water in one form or another.
but study A recent study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters indicates that it was “essentially a river planet.”
He says Benjamin Cardenas“We’ve found evidence that Mars was likely a planet of rivers, and we’re seeing signs of that all over the planet.”
Cardenas added in statements to Nature Middle East: “We recognize ancient rivers through terrain that represents sediments formed due to the movement of rivers, and the research community has already seen these deposits all over the planet Mars, but our new paper indicates that scientists may not have They look for all possible forms of sediment.
The study was conducted by mapping the erosion of ancient Martian soil by river runoff over thousands of years, using a computer model trained on satellite data.
The researchers focused on the formation of “bench and nose landforms,” where rocks are subjected to erosion processes formed by rivers over long periods of time.
This type of terrain consists of a narrow strip of relatively flat or sloping land bounded by slopes (called tables) and short ridges at the end of each (like noses).
The researchers used satellite data and images from the Curiosity rover, and simulated rock erosion on Mars with actual layers recorded on Earth using 3D scans.
The model simulation revealed an eroded Martian landscape that formed topographic benches and nostrils rather than river ridges; These views are almost identical to the landforms observed by NASA’s Curiosity Rover inside Gale Crater (Gale Crater).
Over geological time, sediments have piled up on top of each other on Earth, as is the case on the Gulf of Mexico coast, but that also happened all over Mars billions of years ago when these rivers were active, Cardenas says.
Using a simulation model, the researchers concluded that “Mars may have had many more rivers than scientists previously thought, which opens the door to talk about life on the Red Planet“.
“We have everything we can learn about Mars by better understanding how to interpret these river deposits, and by thinking of rocks today as layers of sediment accumulated over time,” Cárdenas says. “Our work is not about life on Mars, but we assume that Mars billions of years ago was abundant.” With life, and searching for its remains on the Red Planet is one of the current missions of some vehicles concerned with studying Mars.
