Using China’s Zhurong rover, researchers have gathered new evidence that Mars harbored an ocean billions of years ago. In data he sent to Earth, they found evidence of ancient coastlines on the Red Planet.
Geological data obtained from Zhurong, which landed in Mars’ northern lowlands in 2021, would indicate an ancient coastline, researchers from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the China Academy of Space Technology report. The rover examined rocks in Utopia Planitia, one of the largest lowlands in the planet’s northern hemisphere.
Data would indicate the existence of a water ocean on Mars at a time when the Red Planet may already have been dry and cold and had also lost much of its former atmosphere, the scientists write in the journal ‘Scientific Reports’.
Evidence of former coastline discovered
They described surface features such as trenches, sediment channels and volcanic mud formations indicative of a former coastline – with evidence of both shallow and deeper marine environments.
“We estimate that the flooding of Utopia Planitia occurred 3.68 billion years ago. The sea surface was probably frozen in a geologically short time,” said planetary scientist Bo Wu of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).
The ocean disappeared 3.42 billion years ago
According to Wu, it appears that the ocean disappeared about 3.42 billion years ago. “The water was heavily silted and formed the layered structure of the deposits,” said Sergey Krasilnikov, co-author from PolyU.
Like our Earth and the other planets in our solar system, Mars was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. By the time the ocean apparently existed, the Red Planet may have already begun to move away from being a hospitable planet.
“The presence of an ancient ocean on Mars has been suspected and studied for decades, but significant uncertainties remain,” Wu said. “These discoveries not only provide further evidence for the theory of a Martian ocean, but also provide the first discussion on its likely development scenario,” he says.
Rover never woke up from his ‘hibernation’.
The solar-powered rover ‘Zhurong’ (named after a mythical Chinese fire god) began work on the surface of Mars in May 2021 and was put into ‘hibernation’ in May 2022, from which it never woke up. Probably because the solar panels are thickly covered with sand and dust after the stormy winter of the Red Planet…
Source: Krone
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