New study indicates limited water circulation late in the history of Mars

Sun, 15 May 2022 06:10:32 GMT
Space Daily

Lund, Sweden (SPX) May 16, 2022 A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has investigated a...

A research team led by Lund University in Sweden has investigated a meteorite from Mars using neutron and X-ray tomography.

In a cloud of smoke, NASA's spacecraft Perseverance parachuted onto the dusty surface of Mars in February 2021.

For several years, the vehicle will skid around and take samples to try to answer the question posed by David Bowie in Life on Mars in 1971.

In a new study published in Science Advances, an international research team has studied an approximately 1.3 billion-year-old meteorite using advanced scanning.

"Since water is central to the question of whether life ever existed on Mars, we wanted to investigate how much of the meteorite reacted with water when it was still part of the Mars bedrock", explains Josefin Martell, geology doctoral student at Lund University.

Hydrogen is always of interest when scientists study material from Mars, because water is a prerequisite for life as we know it.

The researchers hope that the results of their study will be helpful when NASA brings back the first samples from Mars around 2030, and there are many reasons to believe that the current technology with neutron and X-ray tomography will be useful when this happens.

SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter$5 Billed Monthly paypal only Chinese rover detects water existed on Mars more recently than thought Washington DC May 11, 2021.

Nearly one year after landing on Mars, scientists say China's Zhurong rover collected data indicating water may have existed on the planet over a longer period of time than previously thought.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances said Zhurong detected evidence that the Utopia Planitia basin had "Substantial" liquid water during its most recent epoch of geologic history - the Amazonian.

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