Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A group of researchers found a large amount of water on the surface of Mars. The water was found in a hilly landscape a la Grand Canyon on the Red Planet.
The result itself was obtained from observations from May 2015 to February 2021. The European Space Agency (ESA) said that the High Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector or FREND observation instrument found the water beneath the surface of the Valles Marineris canyon system.
“With the Orbiter Gas Tracker (TGO) we can look down to a meter below this dusty layer and see what’s really going on beneath the Martian surface and, most importantly, find water-rich ‘oases’ that could not be detected with previous tools, ” said study author Igor Mitrofanov, principal investigator of the FREND neutron telescope, in a statement quoted CNN International, Friday (17/12/2021).
The water source itself is also said to be very wide. When compared with the scale of the country, the area of the water oasis almost resembles the size of the Netherlands.
“We can infer how much water is in the ground by looking at the neutrons it emits,” said study co-author Alexey Malakhov.
Meanwhile, the discovery itself is considered a remarkable result by other space experts. However, this still requires further observation.
It is targeted that the next exploration will be carried out at a fairly low altitude from the surface of the Martian ground. So that it can reveal several other facts, including about the potential for life on the planet.
“It helps us find livable environments, possible signs of past life, and organic matter from the early days of Mars,” said Colin Wilson, ESA’s TGO scientist.
In 2022, the European exploratory mission Rosalind Franklin and the Russian surface platform, Kazachok, will be launched to Mars and are expected to arrive on the planet in 2023. Later the expedition will drill beneath the surface of Mars to look for organic material that could reveal whether Mars once harbored life.
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