‘Large amounts of water’ found under the surface of Mars.
from European Space Agency (ESA) In Russian space agency Roscosmos’ ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has reportedly spotted water in the Valles Mainres Valley system.
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in a statementWater was detected using the Precision Neutron Detector Orbital Gas (TGO) Tracker (FREND), which can detect hydrogen in Earth’s top meter, according to the European Space Agency.
“FREND has discovered an area with an unusually high amount of hydrogen in the vast Valles Marineris Valley system: assuming the hydrogen we see is bound to water molecules, it appears that 40% of the material near the surface in this area is water. is,” Igor Mitrofanov of the Research Institute of Aerospace of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Mitrofanov, principal investigator of the FREND Neutron Telescope, who is also the lead author of the study, Published online November 19 in Icarus.
He and his colleagues analyzed FREND observations, ranging from May 2018 to February this year, that determined soil hydrogen content by detecting neutrons instead of light. The process provides a higher spatial resolution than previous measurements.
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The area is about the size of the Netherlands, according to the European Space Agency, and overlaps the deep valleys of a site called Candor Chaus.
Located south of Mars’ equator, Valles Marineris is the largest known valley in the solar system. NASA says It would extend the distance from New York to California — about 2,000 miles in length — and about 20% of the entire distance around the Red Planet.
Co-author Alexei Malakhov, also of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained that they believe that water “most likely exists in the form of ice, not water chemically bonded to other minerals in the soil.”
“This finding is a great first step, but we need more observations to know for sure what water we’re dealing with,” said study co-author Håkan Svedhem. ESA’s ESTEC in the Netherlands and a former ESA project scientist for the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, said.
While it is already known that there is water on Mars, the European Space Agency has indicated that most of it is found as ice in the planet’s cold polar regions.
“Knowing more about how and where water exists on Mars today is essential to understanding what happened to the once-abundant Martian water and helps us look for habitable environments, possible signs of past life and organic matter from the early days. from Mars,” he said. Colin Wilson, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter project scientist.
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