More Evidence of Water on Mars

Econintersect: Some new data, not from the surface rover Curiosity but from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has produced evidence of a former lake in a crater on Mars. The MRO collected spectrophometric data from the bottom of the 1.4 miles deep McLaughlin Crater. The image below from the ancient lake bed area is color enhanced; you are not seeing water.

Click on picture for larger image.

Data was collected from what appear to be sedimentary rocks at the bottom of the crater. The rocks contain carbonate and clay minerals that form in the presence of water. The McLaughlin Crater does not have inflow channels from the surrounding surface, which would have been formed if water had flowed into the crater from the surrounding surface area.

Small channels originating within the crater wall end near a level that could have marked the surface of a lake.

All these observations indicate that there was likely formation of the carbonates and clay in a groundwater-fed lake within the closed basin of the crater. Some researchers propose the crater interior catching the water and the underground zone contributing the water could have been wet environments and potential habitats during the earlier history of the red planet.

The continuing exploration of Mars is continuing to reveal a detailed picture of a very complicated world with a potentially rich geologic (and perhaps biological) history. A quote from MRO project scientist Rich Zurek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, in R&D magazine:

“This new report and others are continuing to reveal a more complex Mars than previously appreciated, with at least some areas more likely to reveal signs of ancient life than others.”

Observations by the Mars Curiosity Rover in a different crater elsewhere on the planet have also found evidence that water was once present on the surface. Curiosity is conducting rock drilling experiments to confirm further that water once flowed across the surface.

Meanwhile the more improbable finding of liquid water on Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, shows that anything is possible. See GEI News (Sources).

While it is not yet known that Mars ever was warm enough to have a water vapor atmosphere, NASA believes it has evidence that there are snowfall episodes on the planet in the current era. Click on the picture below with a larger image and caption which explains.