Chinese rover finds traces of recent water activity on Mars

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) studied data from the Zhurong rover and found cracked layers on small Martian dunes. Now they believe that as early as 400,000 years ago there was liquid water on the Red Planet. New study published in Science Advances.

Mars rover "Zhuzhong" has reached its goal in May 2021. He landed in the Utopia Plain region to study four small crescent-shaped dunes.

The data he obtained showed that the features of their relief arose under the influence of liquid water, which contained a large amount of salt. This water, in turn, arose from the melting of snow or ice that could have formed on the surface of the dunes during a decrease in ambient temperature, the scientists noted.

These traces of water flows appeared somewhere between 1.4 million years and 400,000 years ago. And this is remarkable in that Utopia is located far from the north pole of Mars, where, as previously thought, all the ice could accumulate.

According to the researchers' theory, the water on Mars was active about three billion years ago. After a sharp change in climate, it froze and "stuck" at the poles, and most of the planet turned into a desert.

In the past, scientists have already found relatively recent traces of water movement on Mars, but closer to the poles, which confirmed their theory. The probability of such traces in equatorial regions was ruled out by most researchers.

However, the discovery of the Chinese rover casts doubt on this hypothesis. It is now known that ice reserves accumulated not far from the equator. This happened, most likely, several million years ago, when the angle of inclination of the axis of Mars was different and the current equatorial latitudes were in a more favorable position in terms of climate.