It’s that time of year again, astrononerds, when the space scientists at NASA and major universities claim new evidence of life-supporting systems on Mars. They have two new leads this month that may further research in the planet’s potential life support.
The now-immobilized Spirit rover, which spent five years exploring a region labelled “Home Plate,” inadvertently found evidence that liquid water may still be running under the Martian surface. In April 2009, the rover’s wheels were lodged into a sand pit and after eight months of trying to recover it, NASA officially gave up the rescue effort. Spirit was shut down in March for the cold Martian winter, to protect the electronics inside. If NASA can get the rover to start next year, then they plan to study Martian soil and measure the density of the planet’s core.
The rover’s spinning wheels exposed typical Martian soil and iron sulfate minerals, which dissolve easily in water, lying merely centimetres under the surface. These water-soluble minerals could mean solid or liquid water carried the minerals through the insoluble soil. Since the Martian surface is being continuously sculpted, the water could only have seeped through the soil recently, otherwise the minerals would have eroded by the time they were discovered by the rover. The water could also have come from fumaroles – openings which emit steam and gases in the crust of the planet, which support bacterial communities on Earth.
Another piece of evidence which suggests life may be found on Mars was found on Nili Patera, a dormant volcano at another location. Nili Patera has deposits of silica, which single-celled organisms used in the earliest eras of the development of life on Earth. It is theorized that a couple of billion years ago, steam rose out of the volcano in a manner like the volcanoes of Iceland and Hawaii. The volcano has very evident heat sources and spots where fluids drove out of mineral deposits, making it one of the clearest hydrothermal systems on the planet.
There is still a chance that organisms could be fossilized in the silica deposits and, to find these potential fossils, an expedition robot called ExoMars is planned to be launched in 2018. The current plans for ExoMars include a six foot drill designed to dig through the silica layers.
Curiosity, the successor to the Phoenix and Spirit rovers already on Mars, is not yet planned to go to Nili Patera, since it lacks the drill which ExoMars will be equipped with. However, it is already planned to explore Holden Crater’s lake deposits, sedimentary rock in Gale Crater, and the Mawrth Vallis River Valley. It would be interesting if it was able to explore the volcano as well, and discovered other minerals such as carbon in the silica.
The hydrothermal system of Nili Patera and the possibility of water under the Home Plate region could bring groundbreaking discoveries in the studies of Martian life. Wouldn’t it be cool to find another planet that supports life like ours?
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