Kristin Houser writes:
Data from the Zhurong rover suggests the Red Planet was wet more recently than we thought.
A Chinese rover has found evidence that there was liquid water on Mars far more recently than we thought — a discovery that could affect plans to one day colonize the Red Planet.
Can we surmise that, just as Earth’s past history included conditions to facilitate human thriving (consider the vast deposits of fossil fuels that have powered our technological advances), that nearby solar system objects may also have properties that could further facilitate human exploration and technological development?
Liquid water on Mars: Based on past research, scientists believed there was liquid water on Mars up until about 3 billion years ago — the point at which the planet’s dry “Amazonian” epoch began and the geological era before it (the “Hesperian” epoch) ended.
Understanding the history of liquid water on Mars can help us predict how much water remains on the Red Planet, in the form of ice or hydrated minerals. We might then be able to use that existing water on Mars to support crewed missions.
“One of the most important resources for human explorers is water,” lead study author Yang Liu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) told CNN. “Hydrated minerals, which contain structural water, and ground ice can be used as the important water resource on Mars.”
What’s new? After landing on Mars in May 2021, China’s Zhurong rover began collecting data on soil samples. When researchers from CAS and the University of Copenhagen analyzed some of that data, they found evidence of water in samples that were just 700 million years old.
This suggests that the area being explored by the Zhurong rover — Mars’ Utopia Planitia, a plain in a huge impact crater — was home to a “substantial” amount of liquid water at a time when we thought Mars’ surface was already dried up.
Big Think