TRIBUNJOGJA.COM – New Jet Propulsion Laboratory study NASA and researchers at the California Institute of Technology are questioning the old theory whether or not Mars still contains water.
The team of scientists suggests that a large amount of water on Mars does not escape into space because of its low gravity as previously assumed, but is trapped in its crust.
Although it is known that abundant water flowed on the Red Planet billions of years ago, the team of scientists say that the findings reveal between 30 percent and 99 percent of it has been trapped in minerals.
Their conclusions, which are published in the magazine Science and presented at the 52nd Moon and Planetary Science Conference, accomplished using cross-mission data from the Planetary Data System NASA.
Quoted Tribunjogja from New York Post, Friday (19/3/2021), the data relates to the work of the meteorite laboratory and NASA’s Mars Exploration Program mission.
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The team focused on the amount of water on Mars over time and the chemical composition of the planet’s current atmosphere.
In particular, they examined the deuterium to hydrogen (D / H) ratio.
“Even though water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, not all hydrogen atoms are created equal,” explained the team of scientists.
They continued, most of the hydrogen atom has only one proton in the atomic nucleus.
A fraction of the atom, about 0.02 percent, exists as deuterium or the so-called “heavy” hydrogen which has protons and neutrons.
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